Negotiated representational mediators: How young children decide what to include in their science representations

Abstract

ABSTRACT:In this paper, we synthesize two bodies of work related to students' representational activities: the notions of meta-representational competence and representation as a form of practice. We report on video analyses of kindergarten and first-grade students as they create representations of pollination in a science classroom, as well as summarize results from interviews regarding the design choices that they made. Analysis of the semistructured pre-and postinterviews reveals that students attend to the content domain, local activity, and their personal preferences when evaluating representations. Analysis of video case studies that followed the students as they created their representations further reveals several key mediators of the students' representational activities, including other students, task constraints, the teacher, and local norms for what constituted a "good representation." In addition, the data show that these norms shifted over time as new content was covered in the class, and were appropriated in interaction with other students. Finally, both sets of analyses reveal that students often face competing constraints when creating their representations, and resolve these constraints through a complex set of negotiations.

Learning From and Through Representations in Science

“…Drawing on these different theoretical orientations, various researchers have investigated the learning potential of student-generated representations (Cox 1999 ;Danish and Enyedy 2006 ;Greeno and Hall 1997 ;Hand 2007 ;Hayes et al 1994 ;Prain 2009 ;Prain and Hand 1996 ;Ritchie et al 2008 ;Treagust 1995 ;Tytler et al 2006 ; ) . This approach involves students in using a more diversifi ed range of representations, both formal and informal, to engage with the practices and intent of scientifi c investigation.…”

The impact of classroom context upon 1st and 2nd grade students’ critical criteria for science representations

“…Thus, there is strong support for the idea that learning with representations needs to be studied with careful attention to the contexts in which it occurs (Waldrip and Prain 2012). Several authors (Danish and Enyedy 2007;Hall 1996;Roth and McGinn 1998) have suggested that sociocultural theories of learning such as activity theory (Engeström 1987) provide a productive theoretical framework for reasoning about the rich relationship between students' understanding of their social context and their representational practices.…”

“…For example, students have been shown to critique representations based on content accuracy as well as the fit between the representation and a specific task (Danish and Enyedy 2007;Danish and Phelps 2010;Enyedy 2005). Furthermore, Lehrer and Schauble (2005) note that helping students develop their MRC around selecting and evaluating representations is an important aspect of helping students to understand the role of scientific models, and includes helping students to recognize that not all models represent a phenomena accurately and effectively.…”

“…When designing new representations, critique provides a basis on which to revise or refine a representation (diSessa 2004;Parnafes 2010;Prain et al 2009) and can often provide the impetus for students to reflect upon the content they are representing as they aim to represent it more accurately or effectively (Danish and Enyedy 2007;Danish 2010;Lehrer and Schauble 2005). In the foundational work on MRC, diSessa et al (1991) show how students are able to iteratively critique and then refine a drawing intended to capture the motion of an object (a motorcycle) over time.…”

Explicaciones narrativas integradas y modelización en la enseñanza de la biología

“…En este sentido sobresale el realizado por Danish y Enyedy (2006), quienes estudian cómo los estudiantes deciden qué incluir en sus representaciones. Estos autores mencionan que la construcción de representaciones se negocia en las interacciones sociales y está mediada por la capacidad de elaborarlas, la «competencia representacional».…”