Scientific Reasoning Research Institute - thought experiments

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-2009spt

lstephens — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:02:37 +0000

Spontaneous and planned thought experiments during whole class discussions: Use of teacher- and student-generated TEs in high school science

Stephens, A. Lynn

(2009)

Presentation at the International History and Philosophy of Science Teaching Group Tenth International Conference (IHPST), Notre Dame, South Bend, IN.

stephens-2012rte

lstephens — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 23:24:33 +0000

The role of thought experiments in science and science learning

Stephens, A. Lynn
Clement, John, J.

(2012)

In B. Fraser, K. Tobin, & C. McRobbie (Eds.), Second International Handbook of Science Education: Springer International Handbooks of Education, Vol 24, Part 2 (pp. 157-175). Dordrecht: Springer.

This chapter will (1) briefly review selected studies examining the nature of thought experiments in science; (2) review previous studies on the role that thought experiments can play in science instruction; (3) give case study examples of thought experiments (TEs) proposed by both teachers and students and the en-suing classroom discussions. We discuss several definitions for the term thought experiment and examine methods that have the potential to illuminate issues such as the following: students can generate their own TEs as well as discuss ones pro-posed by the teacher; students give evidence of using imagery during TEs as indi-cated by certain imagery indicators; one can track how a TE spreads “conta-giously” between students in a discussion and how it is modified and improved in the process. We will conclude that student TEs can be similar to expert TEs in many ways and raise possible factors that make teacher generated TEs foster stu-dent discussion and sense making.

Permalink(s): Original publication available at www.springerlink.com

DOI(s): 10.1007/978-1-4020-9041-7_13

Attachment	Size
StephensClementTE.pdf	1.31 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