Examining the Relationship Between Students’ Understanding of the Nature of Models and Conceptual Learning in Biology, Physics, and Chemistry

Abstract

This research addresses high school students’ understandings of the nature of models, and their interaction with model‐based software in three science domains, namely, biology, physics, and chemistry. Data from 736 high school students’ understandings of models were collected using the Students’ Understanding of Models in Science (SUMS) survey as part of a large‐scale, longitudinal study in the context of technology‐based curricular units in each of the three science domains. The results of ANOVA and regression analyses showed that there were differences in students’ pre‐test understandings of models across the three domains, and that higher post‐test scores were associated with having engaged in a greater number of curricular activities, but only in the chemistry domain. The analyses also showed that the relationships between the pre‐test understanding of models subscales scores and post‐test content knowledge varied across domains. Some implications are discussed with regard to how students’ understanding of the nature of models can be promoted.

Keywords:

• Inquiry‐based teaching
• Learning environment
• Model‐based learning
• Nature of science
• Science education
• Nature of models

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation under the Interagency Education Research Initiative (IERI no. 0115699) awarded to The Concord Consortium and to Northwestern University. Any ideas or opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsoring agency. This work was also supported by two additional grants, namely, one from the National Science Foundation (NSF‐DRL no. 0733286) awarded to Janice D. Gobert, Neil Heffernan, Carolina Ruiz, and Ryan Baker, and one from the U.S. Department of Education (R305A090170) awarded to Janice D. Gobert, Neil Heffernan, Ken Koedinger, and Joseph Beck. All opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the agency. The authors wish to thank Christina Schwarz, Barbara Hofer, and David Hammer on their helpful comments on the final version of this manuscript.

Notes

1. The Connected Chemistry curriculum has gone through several iterations and ensuing versions, starting with Wilensky’s (1999b) and GasLab, Stieff and Wilensky’s (2003) version. The version used in the work reported on herein is known as CC1 (Levy et al., 2004; Levy & Wilensky, 2009).

2. Note that the Treagust et al.’s (2002) original SUMS survey comprised 27 items. One item from the USM subscale was removed because the wording was deemed problematic.