Cognitive processes enacted by learners during co-construction of scientific models
Date
2014ISBN
978-3-85403-301-1Publisher
Oesterreichische Computer GesellschaftEdition
Vienna, AustriaSource
Proceedings of the 3rd International Constructionism ConferencePages
207-216Google Scholar check
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The study documents on our effort to analyse students’ cognitive processes during modeling-based learning. A modeling-based teaching intervention was developed and implemented during a summer science class at the University of Cyprus (n=17). Students worked in small groups to develop successive models of simple systems in the topic of heat and temperature through the use of Dyna Learn modeling tool. Students’ conversations were videotaped and transcribed in the Transana software. Additionally, students’ work and conversations were analysed with a combination of two techniques; a video analysis framework which considers class work in terms of three different scales (macro-, meso-,micro- scale) and a coding scheme for students’ cognitive process during modeling. This paper presents the work of two groups of students. Results indicate differences and similarities of the work and the cognitive processes of the two groups at the three scales of analysis. We discuss those differences and similarities under the spectrum of their importance to science education.