Coordinating between Graphs and Science Concepts: Density and Buoyancy

Vitale, Jonathan M.; Applebaum, Lauren; Linn, Marcia C.

doi:10.1080/07370008.2018.1539736

Cited by 14 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 80 publications

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“…While students may hold many conceptions of graphs, a COV conception is important for students to develop. First, it can support students' interpretation of graphs containing non-temporal attributes, such as the mass-volume graphs reported on by Vitale et al (2019). Second, students demonstrating a COV conception are well positioned to analyze critically information presented in graphs, because they have a goal of coordinating attributes represented on different axes.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While students can sketch graphs accurately, they may not necessarily focus on relationships among attributes. In a study of 325 eighth-grade science students working in a digital task environment, Vitale et al (2019) investigated how two different approaches might impact students' conceptions of density and buoyancy relationships represented in a mass-volume graph. They found that when students were focused on graphical accuracy, they were less likely to focus on relationships represented by the graph itself.…”

Section: Promoting Student Conception Of Graphs As Representing Relatmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although digital technology has brought many affordances (Drijvers 2015;Lobato et al 2019) both university and secondary school students continue to have difficulties with graphs. Moore et al (2019) found that university mathematics students' perceptual interpretations of graphs can account for their struggles, while Vitale et al (2019) found that the designer's goal for a task can impact secondary science students' focus on relationships represented in graphs. By conceiving of graphs as representing relationships between quantities, students could interpret trends and issues represented by graphs encountered in their daily lives.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Opportunities for Reasoning: Digital Task Design to Promote Students’ Conceptions of Graphs as Representing Relationships between Quantities

Johnson

McClintock

Gardner

2020

Digit Exp Math Educ

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We posit a dual approach to digital task design: to engineer opportunities for students to conceive of graphs as representing relationships between quantities and to foreground students' reasoning and exploration, rather than their answer-finding. Locally integrating Ference Marton's variation theory and Patrick Thompson's theory of quantitative reasoning, we designed digital task sequences, in which students were to create different graphs linked to the same video animations. We report results of a qualitative study of thirteen secondary students (aged 15-17), who participated in digital, taskbased, individual interviews. We investigated two questions: (1) How do students conceive of what graphs represent when engaging with digital task sequences? (2) How do student conceptions of graphs shift when working within and across digital task sequences? Two conceptions were particularly stablerelationships between quantities and literal motion of an object. When students demonstrated conceptions of graphs as representing change in a single quantity, they shifted to conceptions of relationships between quantities. We explain how a critical aspect: What graphs should represent, intertwined with students' graph-sketching. Finally, we discuss implications for digital task design to promote students' conceptions of mathematical representations, such as graphs. Keywords Digital task design. Variation theory. Quantitative reasoning. Graphs By means of digital technology, students have opportunities to sketch and interpret dynamic graphs linked to video animations (Kaput 1994; Kaput and Roschelle 1999; Schorr and Goldin 2008). Yet, such opportunities are only a starting point. Instead of promoting reasoning, student interactions with digital technology may focus on skills and recall (Kitchen and Berk 2016). We developed digital task sequences that center on Digital Experiences in Mathematics Education

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Promoting Student Conception Of Graphs As Representing Relatmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Opportunities for Reasoning: Digital Task Design to Promote Students’ Conceptions of Graphs as Representing Relationships between Quantities

Johnson

McClintock

Gardner

2020

Digit Exp Math Educ

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“…In these studies, we piloted many items designed to measure students' capabilities to integrate graphical representations of data and science content knowledge to generate complex science ideas (e.g., Lai et al, 2016). We also conducted more in‐depth analyses of the scaffolding needed to support graph interpretation and disciplinary content integration as well as the limitations of the items (e.g., Vitale, Applebaum, & Linn, 2019).…”

Section: Instructional Materials Instrument Development and Researcmentioning

confidence: 99%

Longitudinal impact of interactive science activities: Developing, implementing, and validating a graphing integration inventory

2020

Self Cite

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Integrating sophisticated graphical analysis skills as they learn science is essential for K‐12 students and emphasized in current standards. In this study, we iteratively designed a Graphing Integration Inventory (GII) over a three‐year period, while also supporting students to develop their capabilities to use graphs to learn science content in complex ways through interactive curriculum materials implemented on a novel technology enhanced curriculum platform. We applied the Knowledge Integration framework to design the curriculum, the assessments, and the rubrics for scoring student explanations. The framework delineates ways to promote links among graphs and science ideas. The rubrics award students higher scores on their explanations based on the level of complexity of their connections between science concepts and, in this research, graphs. The GII and the aligned curriculum were implemented by over 300 middle school students (Grades 6–8) across a 3‐year period. We investigated the impact of the designed curriculum on the integration of graphing and science while also studying the psychometric properties of the GII to validate it for use in future studies. Findings suggest both that the curriculum used to support these students improved their Knowledge Integration capabilities significantly and that the GII instrument is suitable for use with populations across gender and native English language status demographics in Grades 6–8. Implications are discussed around using graphs to learn complex science ideas, as well as the affordances of technology enhanced platforms to support this type of learning and assessment.

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“…For instance, when students construct graphs to capture a scientific phenomenon, they make their thinking apparent and available for assessment. In one study, the graphs that middle school students drew of mass versus volume during their virtual experiments with buoyancy revealed their misunderstandings of density (Vitale, Applebaum & Linn, ). In another study, carefully designed guidance supported students in making conceptual connections to graphs.…”

Section: Background and Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Qualitative graphing in an authentic inquiry context: How construction and critique help middle school students to reason about cancer

Matuk

Zhang²,

et al. 2019

J Res Sci Teach

Self Cite

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Inquiry instruction often neglects graphing. It gives students few opportunities to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to take advantage of graphs, and which are called for by current science education standards. Yet, it is not well known how to support graphing skills, particularly within middle school science inquiry contexts. Using qualitative graphs is a promising, but underexplored approach. In contrast to quantitative graphs, which can lead students to focus too narrowly on the mechanics of plotting points, qualitative graphs can encourage students to relate graphical representations to their conceptual meaning. Guided by the Knowledge Integration framework, which recognizes and guides students in integrating their diverse ideas about science, we incorporated qualitative graphing activities into a seventh grade web‐based inquiry unit about cell division and cancer treatment. In Study 1, we characterized the kinds of graphs students generated in terms of their integration of graphical and scientific knowledge. We also found that students (n = 30) using the unit made significant learning gains based on their pretest to post‐test scores. In Study 2, we compared students' performance in two versions of the same unit: One that had students construct, and second that had them critique qualitative graphs. Results showed that both activities had distinct benefits, and improved students' (n = 117) integrated understanding of graphs and science. Specifically, critiquing graphs helped students improve their scientific explanations within the unit, while constructing graphs led students to link key science ideas within both their in‐unit and post‐unit explanations. We discuss the relative affordances and constraints of critique and construction activities, and observe students' common misunderstandings of graphs. In all, this study offers a critical exploration of how to design instruction that simultaneously supports students' science and graph understanding within complex inquiry contexts.

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Coordinating between Graphs and Science Concepts: Density and Buoyancy

Cited by 14 publications

References 80 publications

Opportunities for Reasoning: Digital Task Design to Promote Students’ Conceptions of Graphs as Representing Relationships between Quantities

Opportunities for Reasoning: Digital Task Design to Promote Students’ Conceptions of Graphs as Representing Relationships between Quantities

Longitudinal impact of interactive science activities: Developing, implementing, and validating a graphing integration inventory

Qualitative graphing in an authentic inquiry context: How construction and critique help middle school students to reason about cancer

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