The impact of the MARS curriculum on students' ability to coordinate theory and evidence

Zimmerman, Corinne; Raghavan, Kalyani; Sartoris, Mary L.

doi:10.1080/0950069022000038303

Cited by 31 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Students from the MARS curriculum have also been shown to perform better on hands-on and paper-andpencil inquiry tasks when compared to students instructed with a nationally-recognized NSF-supported inquiry curriculum (Zimmerman et al 2003). The MARS curriculum had been implemented in many schools throughout the region with various content modules for each middle school grade.…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of its primary goals is to enhance science-reasoning skills among middle school students of diverse backgrounds. The curriculum focuses on helping middle school students reason about science ideas through the generation, use, and refinement of models (Zimmerman et al 2003). A central aspect of the instruction in MARS is a computer software environment that allows students to generate a theoretical model of a situation, run their generated model in the software to view the outcome that their model predicts, and then compare that prediction to a run of the ''real'' model (i.e., the canonical science model).…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Impact of an Engineering Design Curriculum on Science Reasoning in an Urban Setting

2009

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This study examines the use of engineering design to facilitate science reasoning in high-needs, urban classrooms. The Design for Science unit utilizes scaffolds consistent with reform science instruction to assist students in constructing a design solution to satisfy a need from their everyday lives. This provides a meaningful context in which students could reason scientifically. Eighth grade students from two urban schools participated in the unit. Both schools contained large percentages of racial/ethnic minority and economically disadvantaged students. Students demonstrated statistically significant improvement on a paper-and-pencil, multiple-choice pre and post assessment. The results compare favorably with both a highquality inquiry science unit and a traditional textbook curriculum. Implications for the use of design-based curricula as a viable alternative for teaching science reasoning in high-needs, urban settings are discussed.

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Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of an Engineering Design Curriculum on Science Reasoning in an Urban Setting

2009

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“…author, 2007;Chinn & Brewer;1998;Hainsworth, 1956Hainsworth, & 1958McCormas & Moore, 2001;Rigano & Richie, 1995;Watson, Swain & McRobbie;2004;Zimmerman et al, 2003). The authors of one study of experimenter expectancy in school biology pupils (aged 14-19) describe the effect potentially being a universal problem that can apply to almost any kind of scientific measurement in the classroom (McCormas & Moore, 2001).…”

Section: Theoretical Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even during enquiry experiments, when faced with a theory/evidence disparity they tend to assume an overly theory-laden mind set and automatically reject their empirical results out of hand (e.g. author, 2010;Austin, Holding, Bell & Daniels, 1991;Gunstone & Champagne, 1990;Lubben & Millar, 1996;Zimmerman, Raghavan & Sartoris, 2003). Pupils may have difficulties switching between the positivistic epistemology of the more common illustrative practicals and the constructivist epistemology of the usually rarer hypothetico-deductive open ended enquiry tasks (author, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Experimenter Expectancy Effect: An Inevitable Component of School Science?

Allen¹

2015

Research in Education

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ABSTRACT:A medium-scale quantitative study (n=99) found that 10-11 year-old pupils dealt with theory and evidence in notably different ways, depending on how the same science practical task was delivered. Under the auspices of a part-randomised and part-quasi experimental design, pupils were asked to complete a brief, apparently simple task involving scientific measurement. One half of the sample carried out the task in a naturalistic whole class context; the other half worked as lone experimenters in solitary conditions where accuracy of measurement was promoted. In the whole class setting pupils exposed to an illustrative lesson displayed behaviour indicative of experimenter expectancy, tending to differentiate theory and evidence to a lesser degree than pupils who experienced an enquiry lesson. In addition, during the illustrative lesson many of the pupils were biased towards their theories in ways that lay well beyond those intended by the research design. In the solitary setting pupils performed equally well with both illustrative and enquiry treatments.Implications are discussed in the light of the problems of excessive pupil theory/dataladeness. Finally, the advantages and disadvantages of exposing young learners to more authentic versions of professional science are considered.

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“…Research with older children, however, has revealed that 8-to 12-year-olds have limitations in their abilities to (a) generate unconfounded experiments, (b) disconfirm hypotheses, (c) keep accurate and systematic records, and (d) evaluate evidence (Klahr, Fay, & Dunbar, 1993;Kuhn, Garcia-Mila, Zohar, & Andersen, 1995;Schauble, 1990Schauble, , 1996Zimmerman, Raghavan, & Sartoris, 2003). For example, Schauble (1990) presented children aged 9-11 with a computerized task in which they had to determine which of five factors affect the speed of racing cars.…”

Section: Metacognitive and Metastrategic Processesmentioning

confidence: 99%