stephens-2008asr

lstephens — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 23:47:24 +0000

Anchoring student reasoning in prior knowledge: Characteristics of anchoring cases in a curriculum

Stephens, A. Lynn
Clement, John J.

(2008)

Proceedings of the 2008 Annual Meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST), Baltimore, MD.

We analyze strategies for selecting and honing Anchoring Cases, which are used to elicit useful—but often implicitly held—prior knowledge possessed by most students. In an innovative model-based high school mechanics curriculum, each unit presents a Target Case, designed to elicit a persistent misconception, and an Anchoring Case. These are connected by a set of Bridging Analogies that enable the students to transfer a conception from Anchor to Target in a series of gradual steps. The curriculum has produced significant gain differences over traditional instruction on measures of understanding. This suggests the usefulness of the pedagogical strategies; however, experience has shown that it is no easy matter to create successful Anchoring Cases. We analyzed these Anchoring Cases in terms of their consistency with previously identified expert design strategies and newly identified strategies. We have organized and honed the strategies into a coherent framework (part of a much larger framework presented in Clement, 2008a), designed to help with 1) predicting which Anchoring Cases are likely to be effective; 2) developing new Anchoring Cases; 3) forming an initial theory about how and why Anchors work. These findings have implications for lesson design, teaching strategies, and pedagogical theories of conceptual change.

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Complete conference paper (PDF)	448.7 KB

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

Attachment	Size
PhysRevSTPER.6.020122.pdf	287.29 KB

Scientific Reasoning Research Institute - analogy

stephens-2008asr

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