High school students’ concepts regarding food chains and food webs: a multinational study

Barman, Charles R.; Griffiths, Alan K.; Okebukola, Peter Akinsola

doi:10.1080/0950069950170608

Cited by 34 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 11 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…A main result was that 11 year old students tend to focus on local rather than extended effects within an ecological system. Although this study was based on a small sample with no attempt to draw inferences to larger populations, these results concur with the findings of other studies of students' food web analyses at elementary (Leach et al, 1996;Bell-Basca et al, 2000), high school (Griffiths and Grant, 1985;Webb and Boltt, 1990;Barman et al, 1995), and undergraduate (Green, 1997;White, 1997) levels. The small number of students who identified cyclic patterns within the food web also highlights the limited recognition of feedbacks, which is a key behaviour of ecological systems.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…Food web analysis tasks have been popular with researchers interested in assessing students' ecological conceptions (Griffiths and Grant, 1985;Webb and Boltt, 1990; Barman et al, 1995;Leach et al, 1996), as well as with those who inves tigate students' systems reasoning abilities (Chandler and Boutilier, 1992), and causal cognition (Green, 1997;White, 1997;Grotzer and Perkins, 2000). Taken together, these lines of research indicate that domain-specific conceptions (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Assessing students' systems reasoning in ecology

Hogan¹

2000

Journal of Biological Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this study, several assessment rubrics were used to analyse students' systems reasoning about food web perturbations and pollutant effects within ecosystems. An analytic paper/pencil task and a constructive interview task prompted the reasoning of two classes of 11 year old students (n = 52), before and after they participated in a month-long, hands-on unit in which they constructed, observed, and manipulated mini-ecosystems. When analysing population dynamics in response to perturbations within a food web students used predominately one-way linear, rather than more sophisticated two-way and cyclic reasoning, both before and after the instructional unit. They thus had limited models of patterns of relationships and reciprocal effects in ecosystems. When tracing how three different pollutants travel through and affect an ecosystem, 10 out of 16 focal students noted only effects that occur when pollutants come into direct contact with organisms, rather than indirect impacts on organisms. These results point to limitations in awareness of patterns of systems interactions, and naive or missing domain-specific knowledge, as constraining students' systems reasoning in ecology.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing students' systems reasoning in ecology

Hogan¹

2000

Journal of Biological Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Students' ability to identify causality is hindered by gaps in their knowledge about temporal and spatial processes, especially when the cause is obscure (Grotzer and Bell Baska 2003). Students tend to overlook population relationships and sizes within a system (Barmen et al 1995) partly related to their unidirectional thinking. (4) Temporal and spatial facets and evolution: to develop a system view of feeding relations, students must be able to recognize processes as occurring along the temporal dimension and of space, processes occurring simultaneously in different spaces.…”

Section: Inaccurate Plant-animal Analogiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Research on junior high school students revealed that they: (a) could only grasp the simpler, immediate, linear reasoning patterns rather than the complex patterns typifying ecosystem processes; (b) overlooked indirect or extended effects while reasoning about populations (Griffiths and Grant 1985;Webb and Boltt 1990); (c) considered a change passing along populations only for populations that were linked through direct predatorprey relations (Barmen et al 1995;Leach et al 1996); (d) did not relate fluctuations in population sizes to environmental factors like food supplies; and (e) had difficulties perceiving chemical equilibrium as dynamic, assuming that the forward reaction must be completed before the reverse reaction could start (Munson 1994).…”

Section: Inaccurate Plant-animal Analogiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

System thinking and feeding relations: learning with a live ecosystem model

Eilam

2011

Instr Sci

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Considering well-documented difficulties in mastering ecology concepts and system thinking, the aim of the study was to examine 9th graders' understanding of the complex, multilevel, systemic construct of feeding relations, nested within a larger system of a live model. Fifty students interacted with the model and manipulated a variable within it in the course of this model ecosystem yearlong inquiry, in a laboratory/traditional learning environment. Students' written responses to 10 pretest-posttest probes underwent fine-grain analysis regarding 53 descriptors of the system of feeding relations. Overall, students exhibited initial system thinking, manifested in different levels of increased ability to identify: system components, processes, levels, and their interrelations; ecosystem patterns and control mechanisms; equilibrium shifts; and spatial and temporal aspects of feeding relations. However, many still exhibited a deficient understanding of the system studied, reflecting a deficient system thinking. Implications for systemic ecology teaching and learning are discussed.Keywords System thinking Á Live system model Á Long-term inquiry Á Ecology instruction and learning Á Junior high school Instruction of ecology poses great difficulties for students' learning (e.g., Hogan and Fisherkeller 1996;Reiner and Eilam 2001). These difficulties are usually attributed to ecology's interdisciplinary nature, to ecological theories' low level of generality, formalization, and verifiability (del Solar and Marone 2001), to the complex systemic nature of ecosystems (Grotzer and Bel Basca 2003;Hmelo-Silver et al. 2007), to the need to comprehend biological systems of increasing levels of complexity (Model et al. 2005), and to students' prior knowledge (Vosniadou 1994). For most biology students, learning biology mostly involves memorizing details about static components of phenomena while disregarding systemic changes in time (Wilensky and Reisman 2006). Learning about a system's components alone does not ensure students' development of system thinking.

show abstract

“…Con frecuencia tanto estudiantes de primaria como secundaria no tienen en cuenta la causalidad tipo domino (Barman, Griffiths, & Okebukola, 1995;Grotzer & Bell-Basca ,2003), donde el efecto se propaga desde la causa (perturbación) en patrones tipo domino, en este patrón ya se reconoce que si faltan los productores esto afectaría no solamente a los consumidores primarios sino también al resto de consumidores (secundarios, terciarios etc. ).…”

Section: Las Dificultades Más Frecuentemente Encontradas Por Los Diveunclassified

CONCEPCIONES DE LOS ESTUDIANTES DE EDUCACIÓN BÁSICA. Pàg 77-93

Rincón

2013

Bio

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

RESUMENEn el campo de la ecología y en general en el área de ciencias naturales y educación ambiental, el concepto de ecosistema y conceptos relacionados con su dinámica como flujos de energía, ciclos de nutrientes, redes tróficas, interacciones, estabilidad y equilibrio y efecto de las perturbaciones sobre la dinámica del ecosistema son fundamentales; sin embargo en los estudios realizados acerca de las concepciones sobre la noción de ecosistema se han encontrado una serie de dificultades y concepciones erróneas respecto a este concepto, en diferentes niveles de escolaridad. El propósito de este trabajo es presentar una revisión documental sobre las concepciones que tienen los estudiantes de educación básica sobre ecosistema y las perspectivas de abordaje para el análisis de las mismas en estos estudios.Palabras claves: Concepciones, ecosistema, cognición causal, cambio conceptual, modelización, hipótesis de progresión. ABSTRACTIn ecology field and in general in Natural Science and Environmental Education area, the concept of ecosystem and other concepts related to its dynamics such as energy flows, nutrient cycles, food webs, interactions, stability and balance and effect of disturbances on ecosystem dynamics are fundamental. However, in conducted studies on conceptions of ecosystem, a series of difficulties and misconceptions about this concept were found at different levels of schooling. The objective of this study was to present a literature review about student's conceptions of ecosystem and the perspectives to analyze these ideas.Key words: conceptions, ecosystem concept, Causal cognition, conceptual change, modelization, progression hypothesis. LOS ESTUDIOS SOBRE LAS CONCEPCIONES ACERCA DEL ECOSISTEMALas investigaciones acerca de las concepciones sobre ecosistema se han abordado como se mostrará a continuación principalmente desde cuatro perspectivas: cognición causal, cambio conceptual, modelización e hipótesis de progresión. En esta revisión, se hará énfasis en las concepciones de los estudiantes de educación básica.

show abstract

High school students’ concepts regarding food chains and food webs: a multinational study

Cited by 34 publications

References 11 publications

Assessing students' systems reasoning in ecology

Assessing students' systems reasoning in ecology

System thinking and feeding relations: learning with a live ecosystem model

CONCEPCIONES DE LOS ESTUDIANTES DE EDUCACIÓN BÁSICA. Pàg 77-93

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About