Investigation of Diverse Representational Modes in the Learning of Physics and Chemistry

这个项目的目标是研究不同的表征模式在物理和化学概念学习中所扮演的角色。我们将探讨物理和化学中复杂概念的表示形式与学生学习这些概念的能力之间的关系。我们将确定学生在努力掌握不同表征形式的概念时出现的具体学习困难，并将我们的发现立即应用于改进课程材料和教学方法的开发。然后，我们将评估这些新材料和新方法在帮助学生更好地掌握目标概念方面的有效性。我们将研究的问题包括：1)在物理和化学入门课程中，特定概念的各种形式的表现可能会导致哪些特定学科的学习困难？2)在学习特定概念的过程中，不同表征模式的相对难易程度有哪些可能的概括？3)个别学生在特定的表现形式上，在广泛不同的主题类型上，是一直表现得很好还是很差？4)学生的相对成绩与不同表征模式、专业领域、性别、年龄、学习风格等参数之间是否存在一致的相关性？5)标准教学中某些代表性形式的过度使用或使用不足对传统上代表性不足的群体的成员有任何潜在影响吗？测试工具包括以几种不同形式呈现的一系列紧密匹配的问题，将同时发放给班上的所有学生。分析学生的反应将使我们能够确定学习困难是与概念有关还是与表现有关，或者两者兼而有之。我们将开发和验证许多这些紧密匹配的问题集，处理入门课程中各种各样的基本主题。这些课程将在爱荷华州立大学和其他机构的代数和微积分课程的学生中进行。我们还将对个别学生进行临床访谈并进行记录，以便更深入地探讨他们对多重表征的理解。当我们发现与代表性模式相关的广泛学习困难时，我们将开发和测试专门设计的课程材料，以解决和纠正这些学习障碍。

The goal of this project is to investigate the role played by diverse representational modesin the learning of physics and chemistry concepts. We will explore the relationship between theform of representation of complex concepts in physics and chemistry, and students' ability to learnthese concepts. We will determine the specific learning difficulties that arise as students struggle tomaster concepts posed in different representational forms, and we will apply our findingsimmediately to the development of improved curricular materials and instructional methods. Wewill then assess the effectiveness of these new materials and methods in bringing about greaterstudent mastery of the targeted concepts. The issues we will investigate include the following:1) What subject-specific learning difficulties may be identified with various forms ofrepresentation of particular concepts in the introductory physics and chemistry curriculum?2) What generalizations may be possible regarding the relative degree of difficulty of variousrepresentational modes when compared with each other, in learning of particular concepts?3) Do individual students do consistently well or poorly with particular forms of representation,with widely varying types of subject matter?4) Are there any consistent correlations among students' relative performance with differentrepresentational modes, and parameters such as major field, gender, age, learning style, etc.?5) Does the overuse or under-use of certain types of representationalforms in standard instruction have any potential impact on members of traditionallyunderrepresented groups? Test instruments, consisting of sets of closely matched problems presented in several different forms of representation, will be administered simultaneously to all students in a class.Analysis of students' responses will allow us to determine whether the learning difficulties areconcept-related or representation-related, or both. We will develop and validate many of theseclosely matched problem sets, dealing with a wide variety of basic topics in the introductorycurricula. These will be administered to students enrolled in both algebra-based and calculus-basedcourses, at Iowa State University and at other institutions. We will also conduct and record manyclinical interviews with individual students in order to probe in more depth their understanding ofmultiple representations. As we identify widespread learning difficulties related to representationalmode, we will develop and test curricular materials specifically designed to address and remedythese obstacles to learning.