Collaborative Research: How Deep Structural Modeling Supports Learning with Big Ideas in Biology

该项目解决了围绕贯穿科学学科的“大创意”更有效地组织STEM(科学、技术、工程和数学)教与学的迫切需要。这一需求得到了包括国家研究理事会和大学理事会在内的政策领导人的大力支持。他们指出，当学生在一致的知识框架内组织和联系信息时，学习会更有效，这是大创意应该提供的。不幸的是，找到有效地教授大创意的方法--使它们成为有用的知识框架--是一个巨大的挑战。深层结构建模(DSM)是本项目中提出的创新，旨在应对高中生物学背景下的这一挑战。在DSM中，学生学习一个大的想法，作为一组包含结构但具有不同外部细节的例子的潜在或“深层”结构。随着学习者开始理解例子中的深层结构(即大思想)，他们使用科学建模的工具和程序来表达和发展它。根据DSM的学习理论，这个过程的结果应该是一个灵活的、有意义的、易于表达的大想法，从而为理解学习者遇到的新信息(即，用大想法学习)提供了一个理想的框架。在某种程度上，这种解释是在严格的研究测试和真实的课程材料中产生的，它为如何围绕大想法组织教和学提供了重要知识，不仅是为了深层结构建模，也是为了其他教学方法。该项目由双胞胎研究和原型开发两部分组成。这两项活动都是在高中生物的背景下进行的，在三个学区的九个教室里进行，支持多达610名学生。这项工作集中于DSM的三个设计特征：(1)将模型源材料嵌入直观的、机械的想法；(2)支持学习者将这些想法抽象为一组源共享的深层结构；(3)在模型中有效地表现这种深层结构。这些功能结合在一起，支持学生理解抽象、直观、丰富和高效的知识结构，他们随后将其用作解释、组织和链接学科内容的框架。一系列五项研究相继展开，以加深对设计特征是否以及如何带来这些预期效果的了解。该序列中较早的研究是小规模的课堂实验，随机将学生分配给深度结构建模或并行的非建模控制。衡量标准区别对待学习期间和考试后的预期效果。后来的研究使用定性的方法来仔细追踪随着时间的推移和跨主题的预期影响。作为一个整体，这些研究正在提供关于学习者如何有效地抽象和表达大想法以及如何将这些想法作为框架来学习具有理解力的内容的一般性知识。随着研究的进展，正在开发两个经过研究测试的生物课程原型：以能源为中心的四分之一年制DSM生物课程；以及以自然选择为中心的八年制DSM单元。探索研究PRK-12计划(DRK-12)旨在通过研究和开发新的创新和方法，显著提高Pre-K-12学生和教师在科学、技术、工程和数学方面的学习和教学。DRK-12计划中的项目建立在STEM教育的基础研究以及为项目提供理论和经验证明的先前研究和开发工作的基础上。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project addresses the pressing need to more effectively organize STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) teaching and learning around “big ideas” that run through science disciplines. This need is forcefully advanced by policy leaders including the National Research Council and the College Board. They point out that learning is more effective when students organize and link information within a consistent knowledge framework, which is what big ideas should provide. Unfortunately, finding ways to teach big ideas effectively—so they become useful as knowledge frameworks— is a significant challenge. Deep structure modeling (DSM), the innovation advanced in this project, is designed to meet this challenge in the context of high school biology. In DSM, students learn a big idea as the underlying, or “deep” structure of a set of examples that contain the structure, but with varying outward details. As learners begin to apprehend the deep structure (i.e., the big idea) within the examples, they use the tools and procedures of scientific modeling to express and develop it. According to theories of learning that undergird DSM, the result of this process should be a big idea that is flexible, meaningful, and easy to express, thus providing an ideal framework for making sense of new information learners encounter (i.e., learning with the big idea). To the extent that this explanation is born out in rigorous research tests and within authentic curriculum materials, it contributes important knowledge about how teaching and learning can be organized around big ideas, and not only for deep structural modeling but for other instructional approaches as well. This project has twin research and prototype development components. Both are taking place in the context of high school biology, in nine classrooms across three districts, supporting up to 610 students. The work focuses on three design features of DSM: (1) embedding model source materials with intuitive, mechanistic ideas; (2) supporting learners to abstract those ideas as a deep structure shared by a set of sources; and (3) representing this deep structure efficiently within the model. In combination, these features support students to understand an abstract, intuitively rich, and efficient knowledge structure that they subsequently use as a framework to interpret, organize, and link disciplinary content. A series of five research studies build on one another to develop knowledge about whether and how the design features bring about these anticipated effects. Earlier studies in the sequence are small-scale classroom experiments randomly assigning students to either deep structural modeling or to parallel, non modeling controls. Measures discriminate for the anticipated effects during learning and on posttests. Later studies use qualitative methods to carefully trace the anticipated effects over time and across topics. As a group, these studies are contributing generalized knowledge of how learners can effectively abstract and represent big ideas and how these ideas can be leveraged as frameworks for learning content with understanding. Two research-tested biology curriculum prototypes are being developed as the studies evolve: a quarter-year DSM biology curriculum centered on energy; and an eighth-year DSM unit centered on natural selection. The Discovery Research preK-12 program (DRK-12) seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics by preK-12 students and teachers, through the research and development of new innovations and approaches. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for the projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.