Using Representations to Reason About Air and Particles

GRAVEL, BRIAN E.; SCHEUER, NORA; BRIZUELA, BÁRBARA M.

?Show me what you know? Exploring representations across STEM disciplines

Teachers College Press

Lugar: Nueva York; Año: 2013; p. 163 - 182

This study was guided by the research question: How do students produce and critique multiple representations to make sense of and explain air and the particulate nature of gases? Rather than gauge students? ideas against some normative conception or metric, we chose to explore their thinking and reasoning through the production and critique of representations in multiple forms. We present data from a qualitative study examining how sense-making resources are accessed through representations, and how this amplifies reasoning about mechanisms to describe cause and effect. An extended clinical interview (Duckworth, 1996) study was conducted individually with twelve fifth grade students from the same grade at an urban public school in the Greater Boston area. The interviews focused on a linked syringe device, through which students explored the compressible nature of the gas and how air transmits forces. In this chapter, we present the trajectory of Isis as an interesting case showing how a 5th grade student accesses and uses her cognitive and representational resources in particular contexts in her way to construct coherent explanations through a process of amplifying cognition.