Relating Teaching and Learning of Science Through the Lens of Variation Theory

ABSTRACT

The relationship between teaching and learning is a most central issue in education research, but it is yet to be fully understood. Variation Theory provides an explanatory account for teaching and learning and offers a specific view on what it means to learn: to discriminate and to discern critical aspects of the object of learning. This paper explores the use of Variation Theory in a case study of two lessons on density in a secondary science classroom. By explicating what was made possible to learn and what was learned this study demonstrates potentials and limitations offered by Variation Theory in enabling a better understanding of the teaching learning relationship.

KEYWORDS:

• Science learning
• classroom research
• phenomenography
• variation theory

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Lihua Xu http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3292-1296

Notes

1 It should be noted that even though the word “particle” was frequently used in the student writings, it's difficult to judge whether the student was referring to “particles” in a scientific sense based on the information given in their report. For the analysis reported here, I assume that the students were referring to “particles” in the same way as the teacher unless there is strong evidence that the word was used to mean other things than “particles”.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Research Council [Grant number DP0879603].