SCIED 552: Science Teaching and Learning Developing Models of Science Teaching

The readings this week around Learning Progressions brought up some discussions we had earlier in the semester for me, and I’d like to use this post to try and sort out some of these disconnected thoughts.  The specific concepts that came up for me were misconceptions, coherence, and the idea from Vygotsky that we shouldn’t just focus on the outcome, but on the process toward getting to the outcome.  I’ll talk through these one at a time:

Misconceptions

This one is probably the hardest to tie to a specific reading, but there was a sense of deja vu as I read through the Stevens et al article (developing an LP for the structure of matter) and the Steedle et al article — it seemed like there was a motivation that if we can just map out all the learning progressions, and figure out the paths from one place to the other (the learning trajectories that are mentioned in Steedle et al), we’d be done with educational research.  In the margins of the conclusion to the Stevens et al article, I wrote: “catalog the full collection of LP’s, determine appropriate LT’s, build robot teachers, and take over the world!”.

That takes the whole thing too far, but this sense of collection reminded me of some of the earlier research we heard about around misconceptions, where there were goals of cataloging the full set of misconceptions a student could have around a topic and ways to undo those misconceptions, and bingo — you’re done.  Learning progressions seem to offer more than misconceptions as a concept did, however, since they offer a specific structure to student concepts, and the notion of movement from one set of concepts to a different set of concepts.  That seems more useful as a notion of learning than the idea that you either have one of a ton of possible misconceptions, or you have the right answer, which was the sense I had from the misconceptions discussions we had in class.

 Coherence

diSessa brought up the whole idea of coherence when looking at different conceptual change theories of learning, and the Steedle et al reading made me think about this as well.  Part of my concern around developing hypothetical learning progressions is that they will be biased toward coherent sets of beliefs — for example, the whole set of physics around the assumption that a constant force is required for an object to move with a constant velocity.  From Steedle et al: “…exploratory model results provided no evidence of systematic reasoning beyond that which was identified by the confirmatory model.”  I’m interpreting this to say that learners aren’t building an entire physics around a misconception — they can pretty effectively separate that notion from the rest of their ideas about how things move if it gets in the way.  This gets to their next point, which is that students don’t always fit within one of the available learning progressions.

Studying the Learning Process

I don’t remember if there was a nifty single word for this, but the last idea that this brought up for me was Vygotsky’s comment that it seems pointless to study the way that someone reacts after they have already learned the behavior — instead we should be looking at how they are learning the behavior.    What I like about Learning Progressions after these readings is that they dive into that place and try to open up discussions about exactly what it is that students are thinking when they’re having trouble with a concept.  This was certainly available in the misconception research as well, but here it seems like we’re thinking of these models cumulatively moving toward the upper anchor of the learning progression, rather than being a stumbling block on the way to the concept.  That way of looking at it seems like it is likely to be more fruitful, since teachers are usually working with students who don’t already know the concept they’re teaching — so ignoring anything outside of mastery seems counterproductive.

So I’m a little confused by the Steedle et al article. I guess I’m just confused about how they went about getting their data and where this facet class came from. It also would have been helpful if they would have included the test questions that they used. Oh well. What I got from their article was that their proposed “novice to expert learning progression” did not predict all of the students’ conceptions about force and motion.  Their conclusion that a “novice to expert learning progression” cannot describe every students’ understanding of constant speed probably can be carried over to other subjects. Even though this type of learning progression might not capture every student’s level of understanding, I think they are still helpful to the teacher to have an idea of what kind of conceptions their students may have.

I found Wilson’s paper to be quite helpful. It showed the different types of construct maps that you can create for a learning progression that I didn’t know existed. I always thought construct maps were likes those presented by project 2061 that have arrows pointing to each related concept.

Our previous readings would suggest that learning progressions fall into the conceptual change and constructing knowledge category. You are identififying students’ misconceptions and trying to change them at the same time building on previous knowledge.

I feel that I must warn you that this post is not my best because it’s late and the election results are on. So, sorry.

Scott was right when he said that the Blumenfeld piece is a summary of all the theories that we have learned. I found the paper helpful in that it refreshed my memory of all the theories that we went over in class. It shined some light on how they build off of each other and how they are related. It also provided us with examples of how to apply the theories in a classroom setting.

I was happy to see the paper addressed one of the problems I have with “situated” (as Greeno puts it), that knowledge is not transferable from one situation to another. I still think that knowledge is transferable otherwise I don’t think we would be reading or writing outside of school. I think this quote says what I’m trying to say a lot better than I can,

“In addition, proponents claim that knowledge itself is a reflection of social setting and social interactions; knowledge is interpretation, rather than something that is objective and fixed. (pg. 831)”

The last part that says that knowledge is not objective or fixed tells me that contrary to Lave and Wegner, knowledge is transferable and not limited to the situation.

I liked how the authors said that the programs that were developed to help teach science were programs that teach for understanding.

Conceptual agency is involved when an individual or group interacts with the subject-matter constructively — interpreting meanings, formulating questions, choosing and adapting a method, designing an apparatus, and so on… School activities often position students with little conceptual agency, teaching them instead how to perform algorithms correctly (disciplinary agency) or to set up apparatus to obtain known experimental results (material agency).

…students working in groups, led by a tutor, analyze realistic cases in which they discuss alternative diagnostic hypotheses as well as general properties of the biological systems that physicians need to understand.  Their activities do not exclude individual study… The individual work, however, is meaningfully related to activities that make more sense, medically, than taking exams to show that text information has been absorbed.

…the cognitive perspective provides us with ways of making progress (in advancing the cause of education).  The first step is to analyze the complex social situation into relations among a number of individuals and study the mind of each individual and how it contributes to the interaction.  This inevitably involves understanding the great deal of social knowledge that resides in the mind and how the person has learned to interact with the social and physical environment.  It does not ignore the social but it does try to understand the social through its residence in the mind of the individual.  (emphasis mine)

The first Anderson et al. article pointed out a lot of holes in the situated learning theory. This article argues against Lave and Wegner’s article about situated cognition and that learning is dependent on the situation. Anderson et al say with Lave and Wegner’s situated learning, learning is contextual and cannot be transferred. However, there is a large body of research out there that supports the transfer of knowledge. I feel that knowledge is transferable from one situation to the next; however, it probably doesn’t occur with all knowledge. If our knowledge wasn’t transferable, then how would engineers be able to design cars, planes, or anything else that improves society? Without the transfer of knowledge they wouldn’t have been able to invent the cars or planes that we rely on everyday. According to Lave and Wegner, engineers shouldn’t have been able to do this since they weren’t in a learning situation that taught them how to invent something new like a car.

Though the first Anderson et al. article does point out a lot of problems with the situated learning theory, I think there is still some validity to it. I still do not think that it is the end all and be all of learning theory. The Anderson et al. paper helped to point out some of the problems with it and helped me to further justify my thinking that even though some learning can occur the way the theory points out, I still think that learning can occur without being situational all the time.

I tend to disagree with Anderson et al. when they explain individual learning and side with Greeno that there always some social aspect involved in learning. Though the person may be engaged in the process of learning alone, I still think there is a social aspect to it. Such as with the example they give about a tax preparer learning the tax code on their own and not while a client is around. Though the tax preparer is sitting alone reading a book about tax code, he/she is still learning in a social atmosphere because a group of people decided what the tax code should be and published the book that the tax preparer is reading alone. The tax preparer is then learning about something that a group of people thought was relevant which then makes his/her learning of the tax code social and not individualistic.

A lot of the reading this week ties into what we have been reading the past few weeks and addresses some issues I had with Brown, Collins, and Duguid’s piece about apprenticeship and authentic activity.

The Ann Brown et al. paper addresses how schools fit into learning by saying that “schools should be communities where students learn to learn (pg 190).” It keeps up with our previous readings that learning is a social and cultural activity. They coin the term apprentice learners as a way to describe students. They say that the apprentice learners are learning how to think and reason in a variety of subject areas. This breaks away from the traditional apprenticeship roles that was used in the previous readings to explain how learning occurs. Our previous readings said that in order to learn we should be fully engrossed within that culture and engage in authentic activity. However, I don’t think this can always be applicable to the classroom. Students are not going to think like a scientist just because you have them engaged in an inquiry activity. I think that they need to be taught by a more informed peer to think and reason like a scientist. Ann Brown et al. states that this does not necessarily have to be a teacher but can also be a fellow student, which is also known as distributed expertise. Distributed expertise gives students a chance to teach each other about a topic in which they have become an expert. This relates back to Lave and Wegner’s article that learning can occur while engaging in discussion with other learners.

I have to agree with Ann Brown et al. when they say that it is impractical to think that all students must engage in authentic activity to learn and that it is not fair to the student. If we were to think that all students must engage in authentic activity like in a traditional apprenticeship as proposed by Brown, Collins, and Duguid, then each student would be a writer, mathematician, scientist, musician, artist, etc. all at once. I think we should view students as apprentice learners in that they are learning to learn and think about each subject and then be allowed to choose for themselves.    

The theme of the week’s readings for me was complexity: all of the sudden, we can actually imagine that there may simultaneously be thoughts in my head and that I might learn something from another person!  While the ideas of learning seem to get more complex when you try to incorporate multiple theories of learning at once, it really seems to allow a discussion of scenarios that are more realistic.  

Brown

As I was reading the first couple of pages of this article, I was reminded of the concept of Zone of Proximal Development. The writers’ term “legitimate peripheral participation” has some similarities to ZPD.  I think that they are both similar in that an already knowledgeable person is required for the student to learn.

A lot of this paper also reminds me of Vygotsky in that society teaches us (the student), we internalize, and then become the teacher.

“Learning itself is an improvised practice: A learning curriculum unfolds in opportunities for engagement in practice (pg 93).” I thought this sentence was interesting. Cause if you think about it, learning is improvised and not set in stone. You aren’t going to move onto a new thing until you have learned the material you are focusing on now. For example, you aren’t going to move onto learning multiplication until you have mastered addition.

“The effectiveness of the circulation of information among peers suggests, to the contrary, that engaging in practice, rather than being its object, may well be a condition for the effectiveness of learning (pg 93).” I also found this to be quite interesting because it suggests that being part of a society helps our learning and that discussing information with other learners helps aide learning. As a future teacher I will try to encourage my students to discuss the material with others. I believe talking about the material can help you make sense of it and talking with other learners can help you understand what you thought was confusing and to maybe see something that you didn’t.