ROLE: Extending the Understandings of Consequence Project: Investigating Strategic Pedagogical Challenges

扩展对结果的理解项目：调查迁移和持久性科学上公认的解释通常要求学生以与他们对因果行为的本质的预期相矛盾的方式构建知识。这种解释可以包括：推断或抽象的因果机制；从线性和单向扩展到循环、相互和非顺序的因果模式；因果关系：在不同方面具有概率性的因果关系；以及分散的因果因素，涉及到涌现的各个方面。这些是学生通常不熟悉的思维方式和抽象概念。“对结果的理解项目”显示，学生和科学家的解释往往具有非常不同类型的核心因果结构。该项目表明，影响学生对因果关系本质的假设是帮助学生重组知识和实现科学理解的一种有希望的方法。然而，仍有一些悬而未决的问题需要回答，比如从一个主题到另一个主题的因果形式的学习的可转移性，以及随后重组的持久性。当前的项目扩展了“后果的理解项目”来系统地调查这些问题。我们将评估对因果形式的理解转移到具有同构和非同构因果形式的主题以及更普遍的科学学习。将评估以学生为中心和以教师为导向的最低水平转学支持的影响。学习的持久性将在同一学年晚些时候进行测试，两年后再次进行测试。调查结果将导致对结果理解课程单元的修订。这项研究有可能影响所有学生学习科学的深度和持久性。

Extending The Understandings of Consequence Project: Investigating Transfer and Persistence Scientifically accepted explanations often require students to structure knowledge in ways that contradict their expectations about the nature of how causes and effects behave. Such explanations can involve: causal mechanisms that are inferred or abstract; causal patterns that extend beyond linear and unidirectional to cyclic, reciprocal, and non-sequential; correspondences between causes and effects that are in various respects probabilistic; and causal agents that are decentralized and involve aspects of emergence. These are ways of thinking and abstractions students typically are not familiar with. "The Understandings of Consequence Project" revealed that students and scientists' explanations tend to have very different types of causal structures at the core. The project demonstrated that impacting students' assumptions about the nature of causality is a promising approach for helping students restructure their knowledge and achieve scientific understandings. However, there are lingering questions to be answered, such as the transferability of learning about causal forms in one topic to another and the persistence of the subsequent restructuring. The current project extends "The Understandings of Consequence Project" to systematically investigate these questions. We will assess the transfer of understanding of causal forms to topics with isomorphic and non-isomorphic causal forms and to science learning more generally. The impact of minimal levels of student-focused and teacher-directed transfer support will be assessed. Persistence of learning will be examined later in the same school year and again two years later. Findings will result in revisions to the Understandings of Consequence curriculum units. This research has the potential to impact how deeply and lastingly all students learn science.