A Research Approach to Science Education at Göteborg

Lybeck, Leif

doi:10.1080/0140528790010115

Cited by 6 publications

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“…More recently, researchers in science education have concentrated not only on students' formal ways of tackling difficult problems, but on students' use of informal but powerful analogies and models in their attempts to understand scientific conceptual systems (Gentner, 1980;Norman & Rumelhart, 1975). (Clement, 1983;Lybeck, 1985;Lybeck, Stromdahl, & Tullberg, 1985;Marton, 1978). Clement (1981) explored the analogical relations that doctoral students and professors in technical fields invoked in trying to solve a problem concerning the stretch of a spring.…”

Section: Within This Tradition It Is Frequently Emphasized That the Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chapter 1: A Review of the Research on Student Conceptions in Mathematics, Science, and Programming

Confrey

1990

Review of Research in Education

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researchers gathered from many countries to report on studies in this area. Given the sheer numbers of studies, an exhaustive review of student conceptions literature is prohibitive; however, these studies show evidence of reemerging themes, issues, and findings that provide a framework for this article.To bound this endeavor, I will use the following selection procedure: (a) Research will be selected from mathematics (including statistics and probability), science, and programming; (b) research will focus on concept-specific studies and thus will exclude research on problem solving, novice/expert studies, and Piagetian stage research; and (c) within the This work is funded under a grant from the National Science Foundation, No. MDR-8652-160. 3 at CAMBRIDGE UNIV LIBRARY on January 3, 2015 http://rre.aera.net Downloaded from 4 Review of Research in Education, 16concept-specific studies, the selected research will have employed alternative methodologies to short-answer, paper-and-pencil tests that report only on the performance level of students.Although these decisions will eliminate from the review a variety of provocative and influential reports on learning, it allows for a review of a reasonably coherent body of literature. These selection procedures can be argued for on the grounds that all the research included is founded on the assumption that students enter instruction with firmly held beliefs and explanations for phenomena and relationships, and these beliefs are subject matter-specific and can be identified and confirmed only through methods that encourage children to be expressive and predictive. WHAT ARE STUDENT CONCEPTIONS AND WHY STUDY THEM?Osborne and Wittrock (1983) summarized the position of researchers on student conceptions succinctly in their statement that "children develop ideas about their world, develop meanings for words used in science [mathematics and programming], and develop strategies to obtain explanations for how and why things behave as they do" (p. 491). These categories of children's beliefs, theories, meanings, and explanations will form the basis of the use of the term student conceptions. Other researchers use other terms for these constellations of beliefs, including the following: children's science (Osborne & Freyberg, 1985), children's arithmetic (Ginsburg, 1977), mathematics of the tribe (Steffe, 1988), preconceptions (Ausubel, Novak, & Hanesian, 1978), naive theories (Resnick, 1983), conceptual primitives (Clement, 1982), private concepts (Sutton, 1980), and alternative frameworks (Driver, l98l). When those conceptions are deemed to be in conflict with the accepted meanings in science, math, or programming, the term misconceptions (Nesher, 1987; Perkins & Simmons, 1988) is used. (See Abimbola, 1988, for an interesting discussion of the significance of the different terms.) Researchers' interest in student conceptions has been provoked by numerous studies indicating that (a) before formal study, persons have firmly held, descriptive, and explanatory systems for scientific ...

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Section: Within This Tradition It Is Frequently Emphasized That the Rmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chapter 1: A Review of the Research on Student Conceptions in Mathematics, Science, and Programming

Confrey

1990

Review of Research in Education

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A research base for new objectives of science teaching

Fensham

1983

Science Education

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A bright year 7 student was going through the usual steps that lead to the concept of density and its values for wood and brass and aluminum. After measuring and calculating the volumes of cuboids of these materials he was observing the volume of liquid they displaced in a measuring cylinder. As he carefully pushed the wooden cuboid below the surface, I asked him, "Why do you have to push the wood down"? "Because it floats otherwise," he replied. "Why didn't you have to push the aluminum down"? "Because there was not enough water to make it float." "Tell me more," I said. "Well, sir, you must have seen metal ships floating on the sea. If there's enough water, metal will float, but not in a little bit like this."Just after describing for me how liquid acetone evaporated if it is placed on your skin, a first year university chemistry student with good test results was unable to give me any examples of a liquefied gas. When pressed he muttered "Solids, liquids, gases" (a strangely immutable sequence that has neither evolutionary nor biblical support). Eventually, he said he thought the COz in a cylinder was probably liquid. Gases could be liquefied by lowering the temperature, he said. On being asked to describe what would happen if he steadily cooled down the air in a space, he began by quoting, "Air molecules, tiny particles moving very rapidly with energy proportional to temperature." As he cooled them down in thought he held out his hands and slowed down the vibration of his fingers about a point in space. Finally, his fingers stopped and he said, "It's nothing." "What do you mean, has it disappeared"? I asked. "No," he replied, "but it's no longer a gas, and it's not a liquid or a solid. They are all just there suspended in space. It's nothing"!

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A research base for new objectives of science teaching

Fensham¹

1980

Research in Science Education

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A Research Approach to Science Education at Göteborg

Cited by 6 publications

References 3 publications

Chapter 1: A Review of the Research on Student Conceptions in Mathematics, Science, and Programming

Chapter 1: A Review of the Research on Student Conceptions in Mathematics, Science, and Programming

A research base for new objectives of science teaching

A research base for new objectives of science teaching

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