Re-conceptualizing conceptual change in science learning

Sten Ludvigsen, Ingeborg KrangeAnniken Furberg

InterMedia, University of Oslo

Re-conceptualizing conceptual change in science Structure of the talk

Differnet idea about conceptual change Timescales Methodology – design experimentsClaims

Re-conceptualizing conceptual change in science

Theoretical grounding

Conceptual change – diSessa – knowledge pieces – few minutes Conceptual change – Chi – ontological assumptions about biological

processes – pre-post test and interventions - few minutes Conceptual change – Vygotsky/Wells/Roth – everyday and scientific

concepts Conceptual change – CHAT – change in activities – time - culture

- level of granularity of the data

Concepts in practical activities

Vygotsky (1986) argues that scientific concepts have four distinct features that make them different from everyday concepts. These are: generality systematic organization conscious awareness voluntary control

Concepts in practical activities

Vygotsky’s idea of the development of scientific concepts has been criticized because it focuses primarily on the vertical aspects of development – the ontogenetic process that the participants go through.

The split between these types of concepts is less obvious in modern workplaces, but concept formation matters. The idea of concepts in practical activities can be seen as an extension and reformulation of the problem that Vygotsky formulated.

Different types of concepts become the tools in specialized discourse in knowledge domains

Concepts in practical activities

Concepts and classification

Language as the tools of tools Concepts as artifacts Boundary objects

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

Design experiment (Brown 1992; Collins 1992,… Engeström 2008) Intervention into already established settings Few researchers have analyzed data from the experiments in

relation to situated and historical aspects. The most common way of analyzing the design experiment is to

address the intervention according to normative assumptions Vygotsky’s method of double stimulation. A way taking the

design experiments further?

The computer-based 3D models

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

The empirical problem Students asking for explanations 12 times Concepts – and conceptual systemsProcedural knowledge

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

The resources represent both the first and second stimuli in Vygosky’s sense, the stimuli being a set of mediational means, which must be understood in relation to the students' agency and the institutional setting (Engeström 2007; Krange & Ludvigsen 2009).

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

Three interrelated levels of analysis

MicrogenesisOntogenesis Sociogenesis

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

Collins, Joseph & Bielaczyc (2004, p. 18): “This approach of progressive refinement in design

involves putting the first version of a design into the world to see how it works. Then, the design is constantly revised based on experience, until all the bugs are worked out.”

This assumption about a final, controlled and complete version is rather naive and idealistic.

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

Design experiments are intervention oriented. This means that these experiments stick with the intervention as such, and leave out how these experiments unfold in the situation of which they are part.

And --- “ignore what sociologists teach us about interventions as contested terrains, full of resistance, reinterpretation and surprise from the actors” (Engeström, 2007 p. 369).

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

Meaning potential We can say that linguistic meaning is an open

potential, and there are non-fixed codes of meaning.

Words and sentences are essentially characterized by “vagueness, ambiguity and incompleteness” (Rommetveit 1984: p. 335).

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

Knowledge domains The meaning potentials carry a history that is often

invisible to the students. This knowledge domain is accumulated over

extensive periods of time and only a small part of it is inscribed in the tools.

This means that the students get access to only the tip of the iceberg of this knowledge base, and

what part of this they manage to realize in practice is an empirical question.

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

Historical elements obviously follow the institutional characteristics inscribed in the ways that the school deals with curriculum based problems,

Could be different in CSCL tools.

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

Questions: how do curriculum based problems mediate the students’ and

their teacher’s interactions after the disciplinary problem has been solved and they have met face–to–face?

How does the particular knowledge domain mediate the students’ and their teacher’s interactions after the disciplinary problem has been solved and they have met face–to–face?

How do the computer–based 3D models and the website designed to support them mediate the students’ and their teacher’s interactions after the disciplinary problem has been solved and they have met face–to–face?

Students sitting geograhically separate

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The computer-based 3D models

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

Methods and data

Interviews with involved actors Data from the designed intervention Students drawings…

Data, interpretation

What’s at stake here?

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

• Extract 1: Scientific concepts in flux • Cornelia: I understood that we were going to build bricks and so on or build upward [in the 3D model]. I

understood that and looking for all of these [amino acids]. I did not understand what insulin or a protein is … what a, why should we find these GTA and then it becomes Met and so on? That … I understood why we did that, but not why or what it means, and so on.

• Pat: No, neither did I.• Cornelia: And then I didn’t think there was any point to building that thing [the 3D model of the protein] when we

didn’t understand anything.• Mark: I don’t understand anything.• Fredric: Understand what?• Mark: Well, what, what, what is it supposed to be good for?• Fredric: What it is good for? You should help that guy! Because he...• Mark: Why is it like that? Yes, why is it like that, so to speak? I will never understand that. Why is it like that? • Pat: There should have been some links where it stood, so to speak, what you should do or what the different things

meant. • Teacher: Mmm.• Pat: So that you understood it better. • Fredric: Isn’t it just that way, so to speak...?

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

Discussion

Critique of design experiments in CSCL research for not including institutional issues when the data pointed to aspects which obviously were unrelated to the experiment itself.

The conclusions from these studies are that institutional aspects are vital to include as a level of description when analysing students’ interactions in designed CSCL environments (see also Crook, 2010).

The implication is that we get insights into both how students can work under certain conditions, and what the historical and institutional tensions are for transforming schools.

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

A situated interpretation to design experiments opens up for analysis of several sets of stimuli during students’ problem solving in various educational settings.

This claim is also supported by a new study in the UK by Mercer et al. (2010). (EWB)

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL….

When different schools and teachers implement an electronic whiteboard (EWB), Mercer et al demonstrate that this new tools is picked up differently by different teachers.

The teachers’ previous practice is seen as a key aspect to understanding how and why they pick up and use this new tool.

Mercers at al also conceptualize the new tool (EWB) as a mediational means, which makes the relationship between the teachers’ practices and the use of new tool transparent in their analysis.

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

The resources represent both the first and second stimuli in Vygosky’s sense, the stimuli being a set of mediational means, which must be understood in relation to the students' agency and the institutional setting (Engeström 2007; Krange & Ludvigsen 2009).

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

The connection between the principles of double stimulation, agency and institutional setting is inspired, but is also a reconstruction of Vygotsky’s original idea.

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

Because both the knowledge domain and the computer–based 3D model tend to be procedurally oriented, it is important to design scaffolding devices that can promote a more conceptual orientation with regard to the educational inscriptions on the website,

- and a more systematic orientation in how the teacher triggers this kind of curriculum based knowledge.

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

Similar arguments have been made more generally.

De Jong (2006), for example, claims that students quite often have problems dealing with abstract conceptual problems in science, even if the design is supposed to scaffold a conceptual orientation.

The question is, how far we can take this design argument, because social and cognitive efforts play a major role.

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

Conclusion

To lines of interpretation To designed featured To emerging patterns and meanings …

Concepts in practical activities …

Resources usedDomain specific concepts Institutional knowledge and routines Historical experience Concepts + concretization Arguments here and now

Concepts in practical activities …

Interactional accomplishment Intersubjectivity – to some degree –

consensus Doing science – doing schooling

Concepts in practical activities …

Back to Vygotsky - CHAT

Concepts in activitiesBetween categorization and particularizationStrong procedural orientation and conceptual

frames that create directionStabilization of the situational object versus

change of historical object

The Situated and Historical Nature of CSCL……….

Thank you for listening and your participation