"Career" Student Modelers - A study of Technology Enhanced Modeling Activities

本研究项目的主要目标是调查中学生在技术增强的环境中发展模型的性质。当学生使用和创造有意义的情境和结构相似的情境的符号、图形、数字、几何和语言描述时，就会建立模型。理解学习者发展和理解可泛化模型及其底层结构的方式是本研究的关键焦点。这个研究项目应该导致学习者参与的模型构建周期的更精细的概念化，以及支持成功模型构建的多个阶段的那些活动和策略的特征。这项工作以社会建构主义学习理论为基础，通过研究多个建模周期，将显著扩展数学教育中问题解决研究的广泛基础。这项研究的结果应该对工具和模拟的设计具有重要意义，因为它们是可推广和可重用的技术。与本研究相结合的是一个教育计划，旨在开发一门本科课程，为职前数学教师提供他们作为数学学习者所需的建模经验，以便从建模的角度进行教学。此外，拟议的研究应导致模型构建活动序列设计原则的发展和完善，以及在技术增强的建模环境中评估学生学习的相关教学策略和方法的研究。这些原则和研究将反过来导致教师专业发展的指导方针和材料的发展。仔细检查学生建立的模型将为评估学生的学习和有效使用技术工具提供强有力的新手段。将成立一个咨询委员会，在整个项目中提供指导和建议。

Project Summary The primary goal of this research project is to investigate the nature of the development of models by students in technology enhanced environments in middle school and secondary school settings. Model building occurs as students use and create symbolic, graphical, numeric, geometric and verbal descriptions of meaningful situations and structurally similar situations. Understanding the way learners develop and make sense of generalizable models and their underlying structure is the crucial focus of this research. This research project should lead to a more refined conceptualization of the model building cycles that learners engage in and to a characterization of those activities and strategies that support multiple stages of successful model building. This work in grounded in socioconstructivist learning theory and will significantly extend the extensive base of problem solving research in mathematics education by investigating multiple cycles of modeling. The results of this research should have significant implications for the design of tools and simulations as generalizable and re-usable technologies. Integrated with this research is an education plan to develop an undergraduate course that will provide pre-service mathematics teachers with the modeling experiences they need as learners of mathematics in order to teach from a modeling perspective. In addition, the proposed research should lead to the development and refinement of principles for the design of sequences of model building activities and studies of the associated pedagogical strategies and methods of assessing student learning in a technology enhanced modeling environment. These principles and studies will lead in turn to the development of guidelines and materials for teacher professional development. Careful examination of the models that students build will provide powerful new means of assessing student learning and insight into the effective use of technological tools. An Advisory Committee will be form ed to provide guidance and advice throughout the project.