Hughes, I., & Overton, T. (2009). Key aspects of learning and teaching in experimental sciences. In H. Fry, S. Ketteridge, & S. Marshall (Eds.), A handbook for teaching and learning in higher education: Enhancing academic practice (3rd ed.

No abstract

This paper describes an analysis of facilitation of a student-centered problem-based learning group. The focus of this analysis was to understand the goals and strategies of an expert facilitator in support of collaborative learning. This was accomplished through interaction analysis using video data and stimulated recall to examine two PBL group meetings. In this paper, we examine how specific strategies were used to support the PBL goals of helping students construct causal explanations, reason effectively, and become self-directed learners while maintaining a student-centered learning process. Being able to articulate these strategies is an important step in helping others learn the art of PBL facilitation.

No abstract

No abstract

Complex systems are pervasive in the world around us. Making sense of a complex system should require that a person construct a network of concepts and principles about some domain that represents key (often dynamic) phenomena and their interrelationships. This raises the question of how expert understanding of complex systems differs from novice understanding. In this study we examined individuals' representations of an aquatic system from the perspective of structural (elements of a system), behavioral (mechanisms), and functional aspects of a system. Structure–Behavior–Function (SBF) theory was used as a framework for analysis. The study included participants from middle school children to preservice teachers to aquarium experts. Individual interviews were conducted to elicit participants' mental models of aquaria. Their verbal responses and pictorial representations were analyzed using an SBF‐based coding scheme. The results indicated that representations ranged from focusing on structures with minimal understanding of behaviors and functions to representations that included behaviors and functions. Novices' representations focused on perceptually available, static components of the system, whereas experts integrated structural, functional, and behavioral elements. This study suggests that the SBF framework can be one useful formalism for understanding complex systems.

No abstract

Scholarship on learning progressions (LPs) in science has emerged over the past 5 years, with the first comprehensive descriptions of LPs, on the nature of matter and evolution, published as commissioned reports (Catley, Lehrer, & Reiser, 2005; Smith, Wiser, Anderson, & Krajcik, 2006). Several recent policy reports have advocated for the use of LPs as a means of aligning standards, curriculum, and assessment (National Research Council [NRC], 2005, 2007). In some ways, LPs are not a new idea; developmental psychologists have long been examining the development of childrens' ideas over time in several scientific domains. However, the emerging research offers renewed interest, a new perspective, and potentially new applications for this construct. For these reasons, this special issue of the Journal for Research in Science Teaching is timely. Our goal in this introduction is to explain the motivation for developing LPs, propose a consensual definition of LPs, describe the ways in which these constructs are being developed and validated, and finally, discuss some of the unresolved questions regarding this emerging scholarship. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 46: 606–609, 2009