Towards a Definition of Representational Competence

Daniel, Kristy L.; Bucklin, Carrie Jo; Leone, E. Austin; Idema, Jenn

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-89945-9_1

Cited by 25 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…1) are distinct from cognitive information processing as defined by the educational psychology literature (Driscoll, 2005). The rubric shown here is more aligned with the STEM education construct of representational competency (Daniel et al, 2018).…”

Section: Information Processing Rubricmentioning

confidence: 97%

Rubrics to assess critical thinking and information processing in undergraduate STEM courses

et al. 2020

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Background: Process skills such as critical thinking and information processing are commonly stated outcomes for STEM undergraduate degree programs, but instructors often do not explicitly assess these skills in their courses. Students are more likely to develop these crucial skills if there is constructive alignment between an instructor's intended learning outcomes, the tasks that the instructor and students perform, and the assessment tools that the instructor uses. Rubrics for each process skill can enhance this alignment by creating a shared understanding of process skills between instructors and students. Rubrics can also enable instructors to reflect on their teaching practices with regard to developing their students' process skills and facilitating feedback to students to identify areas for improvement. Results: Here, we provide rubrics that can be used to assess critical thinking and information processing in STEM undergraduate classrooms and to provide students with formative feedback. As part of the Enhancing Learning by Improving Process Skills in STEM (ELIPSS) Project, rubrics were developed to assess these two skills in STEM undergraduate students' written work. The rubrics were implemented in multiple STEM disciplines, class sizes, course levels, and institution types to ensure they were practical for everyday classroom use. Instructors reported via surveys that the rubrics supported assessment of students' written work in multiple STEM learning environments. Graduate teaching assistants also indicated that they could effectively use the rubrics to assess student work and that the rubrics clarified the instructor's expectations for how they should assess students. Students reported that they understood the content of the rubrics and could use the feedback provided by the rubric to change their future performance. Conclusion:The ELIPSS rubrics allowed instructors to explicitly assess the critical thinking and information processing skills that they wanted their students to develop in their courses. The instructors were able to clarify their expectations for both their teaching assistants and students and provide consistent feedback to students about their performance. Supporting the adoption of active-learning pedagogies should also include changes to assessment strategies to measure the skills that are developed as students engage in more meaningful learning experiences. Tools such as the ELIPSS rubrics provide a resource for instructors to better align assessments with intended learning outcomes.

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Section: Information Processing Rubricmentioning

confidence: 97%

Rubrics to assess critical thinking and information processing in undergraduate STEM courses

et al. 2020

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“…The current research has also revealed that students may have learning difficulties associated with visuosemiotic reasoning if they lack prior knowledge and adequate experience. Experience in this regard refers to representational competence, which is the ability to derive meaning from visuo-semiotic models based on the previous encounter with them (Daniel et al, 2018). We found that without prior knowledge and representational competence, students may not be able to learn effectively from visuo-semiotic models.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

THE IMPACT OF PHYSICAL MOLECULAR MODELS ON STUDENTS' VISUO-SEMIOTIC REASONING SKILLS RELATED TO THE LEWIS STRUCTURE AND BALL & STICK MODEL OF AMMONIA

Nkosi

Mnguni

2020

JBSE

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Visuo-semiotic models, such as Lewis structures and ball & stick models, are widely used to enhance students’ learning. However, there is limited research about the impact of these models on specific visuo-semiotic reasoning skills. In the current research, we aimed to determine the extent to which physical molecular models could enhance specific visuo-semiotic reasoning skills among students. The research question that we explored was, “what is the impact of physical molecular models on Grade 11 students’ visuo-semiotic reasoning skills related to Lewis structures and ball & stick models of ammonia?” In this mixed-methods research, we collected data from purposively selected Grade 11 chemistry students aged between 15 and 18 from an under-resourced school in South Africa. Through a quasi-experimental design, participants in the experimental group (n = 101) used physical molecular models to learn about Lewis structure and ball & stick models of ammonia while participants in the control group (n = 100) did not. We subsequently tested students' visuo-semiotic reasoning skills. Results show that using physical molecular models significantly improved students' visuo-semiotic reasoning skills and reduced associated learning difficulties. We, therefore, recommend that these models should be used as an instructional tool to enhance learning. Keywords: ball & stick models, Lewis structures, physical models, visuo-semiotic reasoning.

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“…In beginning, teachers should prepare text (written mode) in cohesion, then construct intermodal relations between a written and visual mode in order to design coherent and high-level multimodal representations. Hence, teachers, require new abilities, such as (1) having abilities to recognize and identifying aspects of intra-text cohesion in written text and intermodal mechanisms in multimodal representations, (2) representing knowledge to students, (3) transforming one mode to another, (4) and finally designing and critiquing these types of representations (Jewitt, 2008;Daniel et al, 2018).…”

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confidence: 99%

To What Extent Do Teachers of Gifted Students Identify Inner and Intermodal Relations in Knowledge Representation?

Gül

Çoştu

2021

msd

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Gifted students get bored of reading authoritative and descriptive multimodal texts. They need coherent, explanatory, and interactive texts. Moreover, because of the pandemic, gifted students took courses online, and teachers had to conduct their lessons on digital online tools with multimodal representations. They posted supplementary teaching materials as multimodal texts to the students. Hence, teachers of gifted students should pay attention to inner and intermodal relations to meet the needs of gifted students and support their learning experience. The research aims at examining to what extent teachers of gifted students identify inner and intermodal relations because before designing these relations, the teacher should recognize these types of relations. The educational descriptive case study was applied. Six experienced primary school teachers were involved. The data were analyzed via content analysis. The results showed that teachers just identified the primitive level of inner and intermodal relations. The conclusion can be drawn that several educational design research should be increased to construct professional development courses for teachers about this issue. Learning and applying inner and intermodal relations are crucial for teachers of gifted students, in addition to having curiosity, they have a high cognitive level in different areas, thus they demand advanced forms of multimodal texts.

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Towards a Definition of Representational Competence

Cited by 25 publications

References 29 publications

Rubrics to assess critical thinking and information processing in undergraduate STEM courses

Rubrics to assess critical thinking and information processing in undergraduate STEM courses

THE IMPACT OF PHYSICAL MOLECULAR MODELS ON STUDENTS' VISUO-SEMIOTIC REASONING SKILLS RELATED TO THE LEWIS STRUCTURE AND BALL & STICK MODEL OF AMMONIA

To What Extent Do Teachers of Gifted Students Identify Inner and Intermodal Relations in Knowledge Representation?

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