of hardware and software tools to explore and conduct experiments. Throughout
the year, we documented changes in students' models of thermal phenomena,
as well as their views of the nature and utility of models.
By Barbara Buckley
The Hot & Cold Club is an after-school program for middle-school students at the Fowler Middle School. It was created a couple years ago for the purpose of investigating the use of probeware (1) to support inquiry. During the 2001-2002 school year, 12 seventh grade students (3 girls and 9 boys) met every other week to investigate heat flow in different situations using advanced data collection and simulation technology. Led by veteran teacher and CC researcher Carolyn Staudt, these students investigated conductivity, thermal radiation, and human perceptions of temperature. Students used a modeling and simulation tool called the Block Model to create models, run them as simulations and compare the results with the experimental data they collected. In the context of collecting temperature data and modeling heat flows, students worked their way up from simple models to larger and larger systems that exhibit increasingly complex behaviors.
Our educational research focused on how these students' mental models of
heat transfer changed over the course of the school year as they used a variety
of hardware and software tools to explore and conduct experiments. Throughout
the year, we documented changes in students' models of thermal phenomena,
as well as their views of the nature and utility of models.
The goal was not only to figure out what students know, but to get this information fast enough so that the teacher could use it in guiding further student explorations. For example, some learners believed that heat can flow around a corner, but it will do so more slowly than if it were flowing in a straight line over the same distance. Because we could capture learners' models of this situation between sessions, Carolyn was able to engage these students in fruitful discussions. She encouraged them to test their models using different configurations of blocks in the Block Model. Students would then measure the time it takes for the blocks at the end to heat up. (2)
We have found the online conceptual probes in NetAdventure (3), useful in eliciting learners' models and capturing evidence of students' models in a timely fashion. The conceptual probes consist of questions that ask students to explain specific situations involving heat transfer either by choosing an answer and justifying it or by writing or drawing what they think is happening. It is easy for learners to create and submit their drawings and we can easily download the students' drawings to our research database. From the database we can view all of the drawings and text created in response to a particular question or all the responses created by a given student. Annotated drawings like those shown in the following figure are particularly helpful in understanding how students are thinking about heat transfer.
To collect data relating to the many issues that are involved in supporting and guiding students' learning during inquiry, we also videotaped club activities and collected the paper lab notebooks used by students. We are currently analyzing all the data collected over the last year and will post our findings to the project Web site at http://www.concord.org/data-models/
Two models of conduction made by students using the drawing and writing tools in NetAdventure. The model on the left shows cold flowing from the cold source and heat flowing from the hot source. The model on the right shows heat flowing from the hot source to the cold spot.
Endnotes: