Overview
- Offers an integrated account of the modelling processes involved in research into student understanding and learning in science
- Emphasises the case for the importance of acknowledging the modelling processes necessarily underpinning any account of student thinking, knowledge or learning
- Reviews the current state of knowledge in science education in relation to the modelling of scientific thinking, understanding and learning in science
- Develops the personal constructivist perspective on learning
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About this book
This book sets out the necessary processes and challenges involved in modeling student thinking, understanding and learning. The chapters look at the centrality of models for knowledge claims in science education and explore the modeling of mental processes, knowledge, cognitive development and conceptual learning. The conclusion outlines significant implications for science teachers and those researching in this field.
This highly useful work provides models of scientific thinking from different field and analyses the processes by which we can arrive at claims about the minds of others. The author highlights the logical impossibility of ever knowing for sure what someone else knows, understands or thinks, and makes the case that researchers in science education need to be much more explicit about the extent to which research onto learners’ ideas in science is necessarily a process of developing models.
Through this book we learn that research reports should acknowledgethe role of modeling and avoid making claims that are much less tentative than is justified as this can lead to misleading and sometimes contrary findings in the literature. In everyday life we commonly take it for granted that finding out what another knows or thinks is a relatively trivial or straightforward process. We come to take the ‘mental register’ (the way we talk about the ‘contents’ of minds) for granted and so teachers and researchers may readily underestimate the challenges involved in their work.
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Table of contents (16 chapters)
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Introduction
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Modelling Mental Processes in the Science Learner
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Modelling the Science Learner’s Knowledge
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Modelling Development and Learning
Authors and Affiliations
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Modelling Learners and Learning in Science Education
Book Subtitle: Developing Representations of Concepts, Conceptual Structure and Conceptual Change to Inform Teaching and Research
Authors: Keith S. Taber
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7648-7
Publisher: Springer Dordrecht
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Education (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Hardcover ISBN: 978-94-007-7647-0Published: 02 January 2014
Softcover ISBN: 978-94-024-0522-4Published: 17 September 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-94-007-7648-7Published: 11 December 2013
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIX, 364
Number of Illustrations: 83 b/w illustrations
Topics: Science Education, Learning & Instruction, Teaching and Teacher Education