Discipline-Based Education Research Understanding and Improving Learning in Undergraduate Science and Engineering (2012) / Chapter Skim
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4 Identifying and Improving Students' Conceptual Understanding in Science and Engineering
4 Identifying and Improving Students' Conceptual Understanding in Science and Engineering
Pages 57-74
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From page 57... ...
. In this case, learning involves conceptual change.
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From page 58... ...
DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES ON CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING Understanding what students know about science is the focus of considerable inquiry in cognitive science, educational psychology, and K-12 science education research (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, 2005; National Research Council, 1999, 2007)
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From page 59... ...
Although instruction is often successful in promoting such transformation, some students may instead assimilate correct concepts into their flawed mental model when those particular concepts do not directly contradict their model (also see Chinn and Brewer, 1993)
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. Likewise, with approximately 120 chemistry papers published on this topic between 2000 and 2010, students' conceptual understanding is one of the most active lines of inquiry in chemistry education research (see Barke, Hazari, and Yitbarek, 20092)
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From page 61... ...
. This research is sometimes coupled with instructional techniques that are designed to move students toward a more accurate understanding of the concepts at hand (see "Instructional Strategies to Promote Conceptual Change" in this chapter)
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Concept inventories (e.g., Mulford and Robinson, 2002) are not as widely used in chemistry as the Force Concept Inventory is in physics.
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. When they assess what experts in the field deem as central concepts, CIs provide a helpful structure for future research on conceptual understanding, and for the development of interventions to promote understanding that is aligned with normative scientific explanations.
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From page 64... ...
; for various purposes in engineering (Besterfield-Sacre et al., 2004; Heywood, 2006) ; and in the geosciences to measure conceptual change that has occurred after instruction and to reveal students' understanding of processes, concepts, interrelationships, and key features (Englebrecht et al., 2005; Johnson and Reynolds, 2005; Rebich and Gautier, 2005)
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From page 65... ...
FIGURE 4-1 Example of a concept map. SOURCE: English Wikipedia user Vicwood40 (2005)
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From page 66... ...
Given their relative strengths and limitations, the research methods described above should be used in concert to bring out the full timbre of students' understanding, then combined with instruction to promote more expert-like understanding. An example from biology education research illustrates the limitations of relying solely on a single mode of assessment.
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From page 67... ...
. Although DBER on upper division and graduate courses is currently relatively limited, the available research suggests that many incorrect understandings and beliefs are highly resistant to change (Orgill and Sutherland, 2008; Rushton et al., 2008)
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From page 68... ...
. INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES TO PROMOTE CONCEPTUAL CHANGE When students harbor known misunderstandings and incorrect ideas or beliefs about concepts that are fundamental to a discipline, moving toward more expert-like understanding can involve conceptual change, or helping to align their beliefs with accepted science and engineering ideas.
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From page 69... ...
. Effective conceptual change depends on students' understanding that their beliefs are hypotheses or models rather than facts about the world, that other people may have other beliefs/hypotheses/models, and that these hypotheses or models need to be evaluated in light of relevant empirical evidence (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine, 2005)
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. A limited amount of engineering education research has focused on assessing conceptual change (see Turns et al., 2005)
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. As an example of the difficulty of promoting lasting conceptual change, other researchers examined students' concept maps over a two-semester sequence of introductory geology lectures and found an increase in the number of geological concepts identified but "a disproportionately small increase in integration of those
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From page 72... ...
• A variety of teaching strategies is needed to help students refine or replace incorrect ideas and beliefs, possibly even in a single unit of instruction. Physics education research has identified several strategies for successfully promoting conceptual change, including interactive lecture demonstrations, interventions that target specific misconceptions, and "bridging analogies" that link students' cor rect understandings and the situation about which they harbor a misconception.
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From page 73... ...
These newer perspectives emphasize the continuity of knowledge that can be expected over the course of learning and thus the possibility of identifying elements of novices' prior knowledge that can contribute to the construction of more expert knowledge structures. Research on effective methods for promoting conceptual change is particularly important because evidence exists for the persistence of incorrect ideas, beliefs, and explanations even after years of studying science and engineering.
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From page 74... ...
More information is needed in engineering, biology, and the geosciences to design assessments that can diagnose students' difficulties and to design instruction to move them toward more accurate understanding. Chemistry education could benefit from additional measures that specifically target students' conceptual understanding because only a few such measures exist -- to date, chemistry education researchers have used a variety of other tools to uncover and document incorrect ideas and beliefs.
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