Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

The teaching of argumentation has been advocated as a significant goal for science education worldwide. Argumentation involves the coordination of evidence and theory to support or refute an explanatory conclusion, model or prediction. Even though argumentation has gained popularity as a pedagogical strategy, there is limited understanding of how enculturation into pedagogical practices around argumentation influences science teachers. The main objective of this chapter is to present a case study of two middle-school science teachers who participated, over 5 years, in various school-based research projects on argumentation ranging from basic research in teaching and learning to the development of professional development programs for training teachers in argumentation. The projects took place between 1999 and 2004 in the United Kingdom. The teachers were asked to reflect as a pair on various aspects of teaching and learning of argumentation. The results address the teachers’ views and knowledge of argumentation, their perceptions of the goals, constraints and successes in their teaching of argumentation, their perceptions of themselves as learners and teachers, and their reflections on the professional development that they received. Implications for professional development of pre-service and in-service teachers are discussed

The chapter focuses on students’ arguments with a framework based on the Theory of Argumentation of Argumentation of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958). From this perspective, which joints dialectics and rhetoric, argumentation is understood as the set of discursive techniques that will convince the audience of the validity of the theses presented. The general aim is to find a new way to interpret students’ misconceptions and reasoning, with particular reference to the role of premises and argumentative schemes they use, which we consider part of common sense. The chapter is based on two studies. The first study was carried out with teacher trainees’ students in the university. Written answers to three qualitative kinematics problems were compiled. In the second study, held in a secondary school class, small group discussions answering a question about free fall were video recorded. The results provide new insights into students’ scientific misconceptions and into the reworking of knowledge that emerges in the students’ discussions in small groups. The implication for science education is that focusing explicitly on argumentation in science classes and using the same kind of arguments students use, and discussing them, is likely to improve not only students’ argumentative skills, but also their conceptual understanding of science itself

Science standards have emphasized the need for authentic activities and assessments of students’ science inquiry. Project-based classroom activities promote such inquiry in which students are often asked to create multimedia reports or other computer-based artifacts. One issue has been how to evaluate the educational quality of such student-generated artifacts. This paper reports on a three month long project in which single gender teams of elementary students (grades 4 and 5) worked on designing and implementing instructional multimedia products to teach younger students (grade 3) in their school about human physiology. Our analyses focus on evaluations of final multimedia science software conducted in class by the teacher and the students. We present and discuss the evaluation rubrics developed by the teacher and by the students. In our results we found that both rubrics presented viable efforts in assessing the quality of science content and other pedagogically relevant aspects. We then discuss the process through which the teacher and her students were able to evaluate instructional multimedia designs in their classroom activities, differences and communalties of students’ and researchers’ evaluations, and the gender differences found in instructional multimedia designs

Collaborative inquiry is seen as a promising, but also a demanding way of learning. Over the past years several computer learning environments have been designed to support learners in doing inquiry. Students may investigate complex problems from everyday life or socio-scientific issues using simulations, datasets, media-enriched content information, text editors, mapping tools, graphical modelling etc. This paper describes and compares four different approaches to collaborative inquiry, developed in the projects ParIS, WISE, Viten, and Co-Lab. Commonalities and differences in their models of inquiry learning are highlighted. Building on and synthesizing research results from these projects the paper draws conclusions on issues relevant for designing collaborative inquiry learning environments, like guidance and freedom, knowledge construction, and integration of external knowledge

Students from the advanced high school classes up to the last university years have difficulties in grasping the notions involved in the description of the Quantum Atomic Model (QAM). Many researchers suggest that using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for visualizing the QAM would improve students’ understanding. An empirical study was conducted with 20 first-year students of the Department of Primary Education. They interacted with two Internet-based software packages, considered as representative 3D visualizations of the QAM. For the analysis of our results, a qualitative approach was taken by using SOLO (Structure of the Observed Learning Outcomes) taxonomy. Our results indicated that software packages concerning the 3D representations of QAM do not help students to understand scientific concepts and the atomic shape. The article proposes the use of Virtual Reality Technologies for the creation of atomic visualizations based on scientific data that support conceptual change

The hypermedia learning environment “Physics for Medical Students“ was developed at the University of Düsseldorf. Several settings for the implementation of this hypermedia learning environment in the context of physics education of medical students were designed and evaluated

In this paper we report on two studies that deal with the comparison of the hypermedia learning environment to a labwork session concerning the learning efficiency. The comparison was made with regard to the major objectives for physics education of medical students

This chapter presents results of a laboratory study, in which students of grade 12 learned physics with a computer-based program on diffraction of light by single slit (=80). Text coherence plus text-picture-references (text surface design) and the instruction for self-explanations were investigated in their influence on knowledge acquisition in physics in an empirical 2x2 design. A knowledge test on optics was implemented in pre-, post- and follow-up testing. Qualitative evaluation of students’ conceptions on diffraction and interference of light complements the quantitative analysis of the knowledge test. Results show a significant impact of self-explanation activity on students’ knowledge in the follow-up test that was conducted 6–8 weeks after the intervention. Significant effects of text surface design did not emerge. Misconceptions and inadequate use of models of light can be observed at all points in time though the knowledge gains are, in general, very high given the short time of intervention (one session of about 60 minutes)