Balancing broad ideas with context: an evaluation of student accuracy in describing ecosystem processes after a system-level intervention

Promoting student understanding of ecosystem processes is critical to biological education. Yet, teaching complex life systems can be difficult because systems are dynamic and often behave in a non-linear manner. In this paper, we discuss assessment results from a middle school classroom interventio...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of biological education 2014-04, Vol.48 (2), p.57-62
Main Authors: Jordan, Rebecca C., Brooks, Wesley R., Hmelo-Silver, Cindy, Eberbach, Catherine, Sinha, Suparna
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Biology
Concept Formation
conceptual representation
Correlation
Cues
Ecology
ecosystem processes
Freehand Drawing
Grade 7
Homework
Instructional Effectiveness
Intervention
Middle School Students
modelling
Pretests Posttests
Science Instruction
Structure-Behaviour-Function
technology
Technology Uses in Education
United States (Northeast)
Visual Aids
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Promoting student understanding of ecosystem processes is critical to biological education. Yet, teaching complex life systems can be difficult because systems are dynamic and often behave in a non-linear manner. In this paper, we discuss assessment results from a middle school classroom intervention in which a conceptual representation framework is embedded in a suite of technology tools. We use both hand-drawn models and open-ended written responses to evaluate student understanding. While we speculated that our intervention would help students use ecosystem mechanisms to describe broader processes, we found instead that students tended to express constructs in isolation (as opposed to a unified picture of ecosystem processes). In addition, students provided greater elaboration of ideas mostly when specifically prompted. Specific prompts also tended to produce more accurate representations of the ecosystem processes our curriculum covered. Our findings have allowed us to refine our intervention to better translate these critical concepts, and how they are interrelated, to young learners. As such, these findings have important implications for encouraging broader ecosystem thinking in K-12 classrooms.
ISSN:0021-9266
2157-6009
DOI:10.1080/00219266.2013.821080