Leveraging Fourth and Sixth Graders’ Experiences to Reveal Understanding of the Forms and Features of Distributed Causality

Grotzer, Tina A.; Derbiszewska, Katarzyna; Solis, S. Lynneth

doi:10.1080/07370008.2016.1251808

Cited by 18 publications

(35 citation statements)

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“…According to Levy and Wilensky (), students' intuitions about their body, their perceptions, decisions, and actions assist them in thinking about complex systems in an agent‐based reasoning process—that is, to notice that a system consists of entities and the entities in the system have their own unique characteristics. Similarly, Grotzer, Derbiszewska, and Solis (), found that primary school students who were asked to analyze everyday phenomena with which they are familiar often emphasized that the pattern of the population that is formed starts from one agent. Furthermore, the students offered an explanation which included decentralization to link between the level of agents and the level of the population.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Interactions between reasoning about complex systems and conceptual understanding in learning chemistry

Samon

Levy

2019

J Res Sci Teach

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Complex systems" is a general-purpose reasoning scheme, used in a wide range of disciplines to make sense of systems with many similar entities. In this paper, we examine the generality of this approach in learning chemistry. Students' reasoning in chemistry in terms of emergent complex systems is explored for two curricula: a normative and a complexity-based one, so that the interaction could be examined under both the conditions. A quasi-experimental pretest-intervention-posttest comparison group design was used to explore student's learning, complemented with interview data. The experimental group (n = 47) studied the topic of gases with a complexity-based curriculum. A comparison group (n = 45) studied with a normative curriculum for the same duration. Students' answers to questionnaires were coded with a complexity-based approach that included levels (distinguishing micro-and macro-levels), stochastic particle behaviors, the emergence of macro-level patterns from micro-level behaviors, and the source of control in the system. It was found that students' reasoning about chemistry concepts in terms of complex systems falls into three distinct and coherent mental models. A sophisticated mental model included most of the above-described complexity features, while the nonsophisticated model included none.The intermediate model is typified by distinguishing between levels, but not by stochastic and emergent

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Interactions between reasoning about complex systems and conceptual understanding in learning chemistry

Samon

Levy

2019

J Res Sci Teach

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“…These studies have found a pedagogical advantage to using embodied, agent‐based approaches to reasoning about emergent population outcomes. However, they also appear to have focused primarily on aggregate outcomes that are aligned with the agent‐level behaviors (Dickes & Sengupta, ; Levy & Wilensky, ) or detected understanding levels for most students up to the synergistic outcomes where the interactions of agents interact in ways that are synergistic and no longer traceable to agent‐level interactions (Grotzer et al, ). The findings of these studies may represent the promise of an agency‐oriented perspective—that certain types and levels of complexity represent agency‐aligned outcomes and therefore serve as affordances in reasoning.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They found that students developed “Mid‐Level Model Construction” or subgroupings between the level of the individuals and the emergent phenomena to help them in reasoning dynamically about what happened (Levy & Wilensky, , p. 4) and that they were able to use these subgroupings to reason from their individual experiences toward the dynamic, emergent concepts. Grotzer et al () found that fourth and sixth graders could leverage their agent‐based knowledge toward understanding aspects of distributed causality to a greater extent than might be expected based upon the earlier research and that some students could do so even when the agent level and population level outcomes were unaligned.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

“…This work suggests that learners can use their embodied knowledge and experience to reason about the behaviors of the agents in ways that allow them to predict the aggregate outcomes of multiple, parallel interacting objects at the population level. These findings suggest that agency‐oriented perspectives can play a facilitative role in understanding complexity (Dickes & Sengupta, ; Grotzer et al, ; Levy & Wilensky, ). However, Grotzer et al () found that most students struggled with unaligned forms of emergence and questioned whether agency can be prioritized in reasoning about complex systems such that it hinders students' ability to recognize forms of complexity that are nonagentive.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These approaches have been particularly useful in exploring emergence. Emergence refers to the outcomes that arise from lower‐level interactions between multiple parallel interacting agents; these outcomes may result in additive, interactive, and/or synergistic outcomes (Grotzer, Derbiszewska, & Solis, ; Levy & Wilensky, ) . In StarLogo and NetLogo, students program (or enact a program) that specifies the rules that each agent will follow.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An agentive focus may limit learning about complex causality and systems dynamics: A study of seventh graders' explanations of ecosystems

et al. 2019

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Agent-oriented pedagogies have been used in teaching concepts related to complex systems dynamics. However, little research has systematically explored the role of a strong agency-oriented focus on understanding of complex, dynamic ecological systems. This study analyzed seventh graders' (n = 216) explanations of a complex ecological scenario. The findings show that students were more likely to generate agentive than nonagentive explanations and students who adopted an agentive framing were least likely to understand the complex causal dynamics of two environmental scenarios, eutrophication in a pond and acid rain in a forest. Furthermore, students' initial inclination toward agency-oriented explanation on the assessment was predictive of their performance on a postassessment following an instructional opportunity to learn about ecosystems dynamics; a strong agency orientation corresponded to less complex interpretations of the dynamics of the ecosystems. The results suggest that a strongly agentive perspective may limit students' ability to learn complex systems dynamics and that the pedagogical advantages of agent-based approaches may not be without limitations.

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Breadth and relevance of multivariable inquiry supports deep understanding of science practice

Lesperance

Kuhn

2022

Science Education

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The most important understanding science students should acquire is arguably an understanding of science as a way of knowing, one central to science but not specific to it. Students' own engagement in scientific inquiry and argument can support this developing understanding but does not guarantee it. We report the results of urban adolescents' participation in an extended intervention engaging them in guided inquiry and argument in exploring a multivariable database.Delayed posttest assessments with new content confirmed progress in developing the rich multivariable causal reasoning essential to science. Accompanying this progress was progress in understanding scientific practice, shown in the way students approached reconciling contrasting scientific claims, displaying understanding of when contrasting causal claims conflict with one another and require resolution and when they do not because they work together in a multivariable causal system. Such understanding is a prerequisite to the critical scientific endeavor of resolving diverging claims. Students showed greater benefits in these respects when the intervention activities involved content personally relevant to them and spanned more than one topic.

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Leveraging Fourth and Sixth Graders’ Experiences to Reveal Understanding of the Forms and Features of Distributed Causality

Cited by 18 publications

References 1 publication

Interactions between reasoning about complex systems and conceptual understanding in learning chemistry

Interactions between reasoning about complex systems and conceptual understanding in learning chemistry

An agentive focus may limit learning about complex causality and systems dynamics: A study of seventh graders' explanations of ecosystems

Breadth and relevance of multivariable inquiry supports deep understanding of science practice

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