Scientific Reasoning Research Institute - expert-novice

stephens-2006cte

lstephens — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:23:07 +0000

Running effective classroom thought experiments: What expert protocols and imagery indicators can tell us

Stephens, A. Lynn
Clement, John, J.

(2006)

Conference paper accompanying a poster presentation at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), San Francisco, CA.

The purpose of this study is to explore reasoning processes that students use when running thought experiments (TEs) in science classrooms. We also focus on the use of depictive hand motions, which we regard as providing some evidence for the involvement of mental imagery in these episodes of student reasoning. We discuss our analysis of several of the episodes in terms of four forms of expert reasoning that have been associated with expert use of TEs (Clement, in preparation). We coded independently for these processes and for the occurrence of depictive hand motions. This allows us a window onto the roles imagery (and TEs) appear to be playing in student thinking during these large class discussions, where students were being asked to generate and evaluate explanatory models of phenomena.

Attachment	Size
Complete conference paper (PDF)	1.09 MB

stephens-2009uec

lstephens — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:14:26 +0000

Use of extreme cases by experts and students as a learning strategy

Stephens, A. Lynn
Clement, John J.

(2009)

Conference paper presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), San Diego, CA.

We present evidence from videotape transcripts for the productive use of extreme case reasoning by both scientifically trained experts and students. Extreme cases appear to be a powerful method for making inferences about physical systems but the origin of their power is difficult to explain. Spontaneous gestures and other imagery indicators provide evidence that they can involve the use of imagery in mental simulations as a possible source of power. The study identifies a reasoning process that can contribute to theory construction in scientists, and suggests that it may involve imagery and simulation in a central way. It attempts to describe an active nonformal reasoning process that students can do with some scaffolding, and outlines some of its strengths and limitations.

Attachment	Size
Complete conference paper (PDF)	1.24 MB

stephens-2009esr

lstephens — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:09:22 +0000

Expert scientific reasoning processes and imagery: Case studies of high school science classes

Stephens, A. Lynn
Clement, John J.

(2009)

Conference paper accompanying a poster presentation at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), San Diego, CA.

Evidence is discussed for the spontaneous use of three types of scientific reasoning by high school students in whole class discussions. In two case studies, we identify multiple instances of students generating analogies, extreme cases, and Gedanken experiments and document their predominant association with spontaneous depictive gestures. Most were associated with gestures that appeared to depict motion or force, which are interpreted here as indicators of the use of animated mental imagery. We believe these issues warrant further study because it is possible that these processes, along with depictive gestures, allow students to share visual or kinesthetic meanings situated in exemplars in a way that allows the discussion to make sense to a greater number of students.

Attachment	Size
Complete conference paper (PDF)	1.87 MB

stephens-2010due

lstephens — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 23:19:24 +0000

Documenting the use of expert scientific reasoning processes by high school physics students

Stephens, A. Lynn
Clement, John J.

(2010)

Physical Review Special Topics – Physics Education Research

We describe a methodology for identifying evidence for the use of three types of scientific reasoning. In two case studies of high school physics classes, we used this methodology to identify multiple instances of students using analogies, extreme cases, and Gedanken experiments. Previous case studies of expert scientists have indicated that these processes can be central during scientific model construction; here we code for their spontaneous use by students. We document evidence for numerous instances of these forms of reasoning in these classes. Most of these instances were associated with motion- and force-indicating depictive gestures, which we take as one kind of evidence for the use of animated mental imagery. Altogether, this methodology shows promise for use in highlighting the role of nonformal reasoning in student learning and for investigating the possible association of animated mental imagery with scientific reasoning processes.

Permalink(s): http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.6.020122

DOI(s): 10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.6.020122

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PhysRevSTPER.6.020122.pdf	287.29 KB