Concepts of scale held by students with visual impairment

Jones, M. Gail; Taylor, Amy; Broadwell, Bethany

doi:10.1002/tea.20277

Cited by 16 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Gifted high school seniors were accurate within an order of magnitude 20% of the time estimating micro-and nanoscale objects in terms of human body lengths [4]. Learners of all ages struggle to come up with objects of given sizes; accuracy of estimation of size of given objects is very low at the micro-and nanoscale [24,25]. …”

Section: Bacteria and Virusesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A middle school instructional unit for size and scale contextualized in nanotechnology

Delgado

Stevens

Shin

et al. 2015

Nanotechnology Reviews

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Size and scale is a "big idea" in nanoscale science and engineering and is poorly understood by secondary students. This paper describes the design process, implementation, and evaluation of a 12-h instructional unit for size and scale, in a summer science camp for middle school students from a low SES public school district. Instructional activities were designed following a construct-centered design approach and included the use of microscopes, custom-made computer simulations, and 2-D and 3-D scale models. The unit followed a project-based instructional approach and was contextualized with the driving question, "How can nanotechnology keep me from getting sick?" Pre-and post-intervention interviews revealed that students significantly increased their qualitative and quantitative knowledge of the size of objects including atom, viruses, and cells, with an effect size of 0.8 for an overall metric. The campers closed the gap with private middle school students and on some measures surpassed high school students from the same district. The principle of "broad spectrum" curriculum and instruction -activities that target specific advanced understandings but simultaneously scaffold or support the learning of more fundamental, prerequisite ideaswas inductively generated from an analysis of the learning activities.

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Section: Bacteria and Virusesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Learners of all ages struggle to come up with objects of given sizes; accuracy of estimation of size of given objects is very low at the micro-and nanoscale [4,24,25].…”

Section: Grouping Ordering Relative Size Absolute Sizementioning

confidence: 99%

A middle school instructional unit for size and scale contextualized in nanotechnology

Delgado

Stevens

Shin

et al. 2015

Nanotechnology Reviews

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Scientists are exploring the size and origin of the universe (at the large end of the scale) and the nature and behavior of sub-microscopic participles (at the very small end of the scale) (Jones, Gardner, Taylor, Wiebe, & Forrester, 2011;Jones, Taylor, & Broadwell, 2009;Tretter, Jones, & Minogue, 2006). Therefore, understanding how students visualize entities at these two scale ends may allow for better alignment of science curricula with new advancements in science and help students better understand newly discovered phenomena.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Exploring Verbal, Visual and Schematic Learners' Static and Dynamic Mental Images of Scientific Species and Processes in Relation to Their Spatial Ability

Al‐Balushi

Coll

2013

International Journal of Science Education

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The current study compared different learners' static and dynamic mental images of unseen scientific species and processes in relation to their spatial ability. Learners were classified into verbal, visual and schematic. Dynamic images were classified into: appearing/disappearing, linearmovement, and rotation. Two types of scientific entities and their related processes were investigated: astronomical and microscopic. The sample included 79 female students from Grades 9 and 10. For the purpose of the study, three instruments were used. The Mental Images by Guided Imagery instrument was designed to investigate participants' visualization of static and dynamic mental images. The Water-Level Task was adopted to estimate participants' spatial ability. The Learning Styles Inventory was used to classify participants into verbal, visual and schematic learners. The research findings suggest that schematic learners outperformed verbal and visual learners in their spatial ability. They also outperformed them in their vividness of microscopic images; both micro-static and micro-dynamic images; especially in the case of appearing/disappearing images. The differences were not significant in the case of astronomical images. The results also indicate that appearing/disappearing images received the least vividness scores for all three types of learners.

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“…Students from elementary through PhD, including those with visual impairments, estimate linear spatial magnitude better at human scales and worse at the extremes of scale, nanoscale to astronomical (Tretter et al, 2006a(Tretter et al, , 2006bJones et al, 2008Jones et al, , 2009aJones et al, , 2009b. Typically, the magnitudes of small-scale objects are overestimated, while the sizes of large-scale ones are underestimated; however, one study found that college students both under-and overestimate the sizes of small objects (Gerlach et al, 2014a).…”

Section: Conceptions Of Scale As Magnitudementioning

confidence: 99%

Learning About Spatial and Temporal Scale: Current Research, Psychological Processes, and Classroom Implications

Cheek

LaDue

Shipley

2017

Journal of Geoscience Education

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Geoscientists analyze and integrate spatial and temporal information at a range of scales to understand Earth processes. Despite this, the concept of scale is ill defined and taught unevenly across the K-16 continuum. This literature review focuses on two meanings of scale: one as the magnitude of the extent of a dimension and the other as a relationship between objects or events. We review 42 papers from science education and discipline-based education research (DBER) literature on students' conceptions related to one or both meanings of scale. Analysis of this prior work reveals a broader (though still limited) research base on domain general concepts of scale as magnitude and scant research on scale as a relationship. Learners begin reasoning about spatial and temporal magnitudes categorically by working with scales based on standard units and nonmetric values, such as body length. Concepts of scale magnitudes outside human experience are nonlinear. Facility with fractions and proportional reasoning are positively associated with the ability to reason about scale as a relationship. Two constructs from the psychological literature, structure mapping and the category adjustment model, offer theoretical accounts for these findings. We borrow a typology from the psychological literature to frame common geoscience instructional models in the context of spatial and temporal scale and suggest how instructors might facilitate students' reasoning about scale models. We identify a number of avenues for possible future research, including a critical need to understand how conceptual understanding of scale develops across the K-16 continuum. Ó

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Concepts of scale held by students with visual impairment

Cited by 16 publications

References 18 publications

A middle school instructional unit for size and scale contextualized in nanotechnology

A middle school instructional unit for size and scale contextualized in nanotechnology

Exploring Verbal, Visual and Schematic Learners' Static and Dynamic Mental Images of Scientific Species and Processes in Relation to Their Spatial Ability

Learning About Spatial and Temporal Scale: Current Research, Psychological Processes, and Classroom Implications

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