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- Adbo, Karina, et al.
(författare)
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Developing an Understanding of Chemistry : A case study of one Swedish student's rich conceptualisation for making sense of upper secondary school chemistry
- 2014
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Ingår i: International Journal of Science Education. - : Taylor & Francis. - 0950-0693 .- 1464-5289. ; 36:7, s. 1107-1136
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper, we report a case study of a 16-year-old Swedish upper secondary student's developing understanding of key concept areas studied in his upper secondary school chemistry course. This study illustrates how the thinking of an individual learner, Jesper, evolves over a school year in response to formal instruction in a particular educational context. Jesper presented a range of ideas, some of which matched intended teaching whilst others were quite inconsistent with canonical chemistry. Of particular interest, research data suggest that his initial alternative conceptions influenced his thinking about subsequent teaching of chemistry subject matter, illustrating how students' alternative conceptions interact with formal instruction. Our findings support the claims of some researchers that alternative conceptions may be stable and tenacious in the context of instruction. Jesper's rich conceptualisation of matter at submicroscopic scales drew upon intuitions about the world that led to teaching being misinterpreted to develop further alternative conceptions. Yet his intuitive thinking also offered clear potential links with canonical scientific concepts that could have been harnessed to channel his developing thinking. These findings support the argument that identifying students' intuitive thinking and how it develops in different instructional contexts can support the development of more effective science pedagogy.
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- Adbo, Karina
(författare)
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Relationships between models used for teaching chemistry and those expressed by students
- 2012
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis is focused upon chemistry as a school subject and students' interpretations and use of formally introduced teaching models. To explore students' developing repertoire of chemical models, a longitudinal interview study was undertaken spanning the first year of upper secondary school chemistry. Matter in its different states was selected as the target framework for this study. The results presented are derived from both generalisations of groups of students as well as a case study describing an individual learner's interpretation of formal content. The results obtained demonstrated that the formal teaching models provided to the students included in this study were not sufficient to afford them a coherent framework of matter in its different states or for chemical bonding. Instead, students' expressed models of matter and phase change were to a high degree dependent on electron movement (Paper I), anthropomorphism (Paper II) and, for one student, a mechanistic approach based on small particles and gravitation (Paper III). The results from this study place focus on the importance of learners' prior learning (previous experiences) and the need to develop a coherent framework of formal teaching models for the nature of matter and phase change.
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- Taber, Keith, et al.
(författare)
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Developing chemical understanding in the explanatory vacuum : Swedish high school students' use of an anthropomorphic conceptual framework to make sense of chemical phenomena
- 2013
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Ingår i: Concepts of Matter in Science Education. - Dordrecht : Springer. - 9400759134 ; , s. 347-370
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Bokkapitel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The results presented here derive from a research project exploring 16-18 year oldSwedish upper secondary science students’ developing understandings of keyconcepts for matter and phase change. In the Swedish educational context there islimited prescription of what is taught at different grade levels, and students may onlymeet scientific models of the submicroscopic structure of the matter some years afterconsidering the phenomena that these models have been developed to explain.Students may develop alternative and sometimes idiosyncratic imaginative notions topopulate this ‘explanatory vacuum’. In this study we discuss one aspect of studentresponses in a sequence of semi-structured interviews spread over a single schoolyear, viz. the common use of anthropomorphic language in student descriptions andexplanations of basic chemical phenomena – change of state, chemical bonding andreactions. Such anthropomorphic language has been considered to have the potentialeither to facilitate or impede progression in students’ learning in chemistry. In thepresent study we found a high level of anthropomorphic language in students’explanations. In some cases there were clear indications that our interviewees wereaware of the limitation of their anthropomorphic explanations, which could beconsidered to take the role of temporary place-holder for technical ideas not yetavailable. However, in many other instances anthropomorphism was used without anyindication of its limited explanatory power. In these circumstances anthropomorphicexplanations would appear to satisfy epistemic hunger, the human “need to ‘makemeaning’ and understand their surroundings” (De Jesus, Teixeira-Dias, & Watts,2003, p. 1017), and take the place of canonical explanations.
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