Graphing: Cognitive ability or practice?

Abstract

Traditional views conceive graphing as knowledge represented in students' minds. We show in our critique that such views lead to a common assessment problem of how to account for variations in performance across contexts and tasks, and a common attribution problem that locates difficulties in students' deficient cognitive apparatus. Grounded in recent research of scientists at work and everyday cognition, this article provides an alternative perspective that conceives of graphing as observable practices employed to achieve specific goals. This perspective highlights the nature of graphs as semiotic objects, rhetorical devices, and conscription devices. This shift in perspective dissolves problems with assessment and inappropriate attribution of student difficulties. The plausibility and fruitfulness of the new perspective is illustrated in three ways. First, we show that successes and failures of various graphing curricula become understandable in terms of the presence or absence of social dimensions of the practice. Second, we show how our perspective necessitates new assessment practices. Third, we show how our practice perspective on graphing led us to different learning environments and to new foci for conducting research in student‐centered open‐inquiry contexts. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 81:91–106, 1997.

Discrete and continuous reasoning about change in primary school classrooms

“…Mevarech and Kramarsky (1997) reported that they developed a graphing course that, although it did reduce middle-school students' superficial graphing errors, it did not affect their more fundamental alternative conceptions about graphing. To overcome these problems, Roth and McGinn (1997) propose a social-cultural perspective focusing on students becoming graphing practitioners. This resonates with diSessa et al's (1991) study of students' meta-representational competency (diSessa and Sherin 2000) in which students did invent all sorts of idiosyncratic representations of motion.…”

Assessing and Understanding Line Graph Interpretations Using a Scoring Rubric of Organized Cited Factors

“…The differences between these two are most evident by the ways graph interpretation is studied. Whereas the psychological research attempts to examine component skills, knowledge, and dispositions to interpret graphs using multiple choice tests and inferences made using test scores (Leinhardt, Zaslavsky, & Stein, 1990), the sociocultural research views learning to interpret graphs holistically, especially in science, often highlighting the interconnected nature of graphing (Roth & McGinn, 1997).…”

Graph Interpretation Ability and Perception of High School Students and Preservice Secondary Teachers in Earth Science

“…그래프는 실제의 다른 측면을 표현하는 기호학적 (semiotic) 대상이고, 과학적 의사소통에서 수사학적 (rhetorical) 기능을 하며, 공동 과학 활동을 중재하는 공유(conscription) 장치로서의 역할을 한다 (Roth and McGinn, 1997). 또한 그래프는 이미 공유된 논리적 인 자료의 배열과 시각적으로 우세한 장점으로 인해 수학과 과학은 물론이고 지리학, 경제학, 통계학 등 여러 학문 분야에서 폭넓게 사용되고 있다 (박현진, 2000; 성태제, 2001; 정광복, 2005).…”