Lena Löfgren - Research

Background and aims

Questions concerning Humankind's survival on earth often have a connection to where different materials come from and go to in processes in nature and society. Many of these processes include phenomena we cannot apprehend with our senses e.g. the burning of solid matter changing into gas and the evaporation of water into steam. Students' difficulties to understand these processes have been well documented in the science education research literature, e.g. Andersson (1990). Research on students' understanding of ecological processes show that the students' early experiences could mean a lot to their further understanding of processes in nature (Helldén, 1999, 2001). Students' difficulties of understanding the process of burning have been reported by e.g. Johnson (2002) in a study of 11 to 14 year old students. Investigations about evaporation phenomena as Osborne & Cosgrove (1983), Bar & Galili (1994), Tytler (2000) etc. are almost exclusively dealing with open situations, i.e. where water evaporates into free air.

In order to develop successful teaching approaches of transformations of matter, we need to know more about how young students develop understanding of processes including transformations of matter in different contexts. To understand how a student actually develops his or her understanding in science is a complex matter. It is essential to know about individual students' development to really understand what support learning and thereby be able to develop science teaching. The only way to learn about individual students' development is to study individuals in more detail and over longer periods of time. Such longitudinal studies have also been called for in the literature, e.g. White (2001).

From 1997 I have been working within a broad, still ongoing, project "A longitudinal study of how learning in science develop in the early years of the compulsory school". National Agency for Higher Education and Kristianstad University have financed the project and different findings of it have been presented for instance in Holgersson (2001) and Holgersson & Löfgren (2003).

The theoretical framework of this project builds upon Human Constructivism formulated by Joseph Novak (1993). This perspective gets its inspiration from Ausubel's assimilation theory of learning and underlines the importance of the unique interplay that occurs between thinking, feeling, and acting in human learning and in human construction of new knowledge. Novak tries to "conflate issues that deal with the nature of knowledge construction into the issues that deal with the psychology of meaning making" (p. 190) and he also stresses the important role of language in learning processes.

From this background the aims of my thesis are to

- study how individual students' ideas about transformations of matter in different contexts develop from the age of 7 to 15

- study how students use an early introduced molecule concept when developing their ideas

- study the role of words, experiences, reasoning and metacognition in students' learning within this area

- get to know how the students, at the age of 15, look at themselves as scientists.

Methodology and design

The only possible way to gain information about how young students learn and think about different phenomena is through some kind of communication. Like many other researchers, I have found that a friendly, semi-structured conversation with an individual student about a phenomenon and with concrete things present can give reliable information about his or her ideas (Duit, Treagust & Mansfield, 1996). This kind of interview can be classified as a form of revised clinical interview. Having concrete things present that the student could look at but also sometimes feel and manipulate in different ways is very suitable and natural when interviewing about phenomena in natural sciences. This design also gives a good flexibility with a possibility to follow up different themes raised during the interview (Ginsburg, 1997).

I have chosen a longitudinal design of my study because I am interested in the individual students development as I think this can, in the long run, give us vital information possible to use in teaching situations. I have chosen to examine the development of ideas about matter transformation in three different contexts. These contexts are chosen as one biological, one chemical and one physical.

In my study I follow, mainly through interviews, 20 students from 7 to 15 years of age. The students are all born in 1990 and live in a middle-sized Swedish town. To begin with they attended two different schools. All classes were age-group-integrated, i.e. a student starts in a class when he or she is 6 years old and stay in that class for three years. The year the student is 9 he or she starts in a new class in which he or she stays for the next three years. At the age of 12 they all moved to the same school where they were also mixed with students from other schools and then divided in age homogenous classes.

In spring 1997, 1999 and 2001 I have had teaching sessions with those students taking part in the study. I have worked with groups of 8-12 students at a time. These sessions have focused on discussing different situations where matter transforms in one way or another. They have been documented by videotape. Inspired by Novak & Musonda (1991) a molecule concept was introduced in the first teaching session in 1997. The students were at this session 6 or 7 years old depending on their birth dates. Introducing a molecule concept made it possible to discuss matter transformation in more detail. In spring 2003 the teachers had one teaching session where the students and the teacher discussed new situations like the ones from earlier years. From the autumn 2003 the students will have more conventional lessons in biology, chemistry and physics.

Interviews have been conducted individually and recorded on tape. The following situations have been used:

- the future of fading leaves left lying on the ground

- the disappearance of the wax of a burning candle

- the appearance of mist on the inside of the cover of a glass of water.

The main structure of the interviews in 1997, 1999, 2001 and 2003 has been as follows: The student has been presented with some leaves and the question has been "These leaves have been lying on the ground all winter. What do you think will happen to them if they are left lying on the ground?" Then two candles, one long and one short, have been presented. I have asked pointing at the candles "What do you think has happened to that piece of the candle?" Lastly a glass with some water and covered with a glass-plate, on which some mist has formed, has been shown and I have asked "What do you think it is that we can see inside on the cover?" and then "How could this happen?" Depending on the student's answers the follow up questions have differed.

In 1998, 2000 and 2002 a more metacognitive approach has been used. Earlier project has shown that students often can bring light on their own statements by being allowed to comment on them at a later time (Helldén, 2001). The students have been presented with the same equipment and have listened to the last interview from the year before, one part of the interview at a time. Then they have been asked what they think about what they said last year. Do they think in the same way today or in another way? What do they think today? Even in these interviews different follow up questions have been asked depending on the student's answers.

In 2004 I intend to present the students, divided in small groups, with problem solving situations in which matter transformation is one essential part of the understanding of the situation. The students' discussions will be videotaped and then analysed specially from the point of their reasoning when talking and trying to understand the situations. These group discussions will be followed up by individual interviews. In 2005 I will let the students individually look at the videotape and then comment the discussions. In these interviews I will also ask them how they look at themselves as scientists.

The table below shows an overview of the different, already accomplished and planned elements of the study.

1997
Interview. Undervisningsinslag. Interview.
1998
Interviewmetakognitiv.
1999
Interview. Tecahing sessions. Interview.
2000
Interview metakognitive.
2001
Interview. Tecahing sessions. Interview.
2002
Interview metakognitive.
2003
Interview. Tecahing sessions.
2004
Problem solving situations in small groups. Follow up interview.
2005
Interview metakognitive.

Preliminary results

The interviews, so far accomplished, have been analysed according to the students' descriptions of the different phenomena. Every phenomenon has been analysed per se, looking for categories of conceptions that the students express. Different patterns of individual development are then analysed.

The very young students focus on what the leaves in front of them look like. Later on they explain the decay with words like rot and moulder. In the later interviews most of the students think that the leaves turn into soil because of worms eating them.

To understand what happens with a candle burning is very difficult. The concrete experience is that the wax just disappears. There is nothing to explain. After thinking most students say that wax is running down the sides or just melting. Later on they think it could evaporate out in the air through some process of melting and/or drying. In the later interviews a few express the idea that transformation of matter might be possible.

Except from the very first interviews all students know that it is water on the cover of the glass. To a lot of students the air is important either because of the closeness in the situation or because of the air lifting the water. To many of them the temperature plays an important role. In the later interviews they often use the word evaporation to explain the situation.

The very interesting analyses of the individual students' patterns of development in the three different contexts and the comparisons of development between the contexts are still going on. Results so far show that the students develop understanding of the different phenomena quite differently relying directly on their experiences, for some of them the molecule concept becomes a tool to understand the gaseous state, and their development of words and language seems extremely important.

Conclusions and implications

The results so far show how complicated understanding of these apparently rather simple phenomena are, how complicated learning is, and that learning has a strong individual variation. The results also show that a longitudinal study like this with qualitative analyses can catch this complexity and variation. The study informs about the possibilities to use a molecule concept in early teaching within this subject area. So far the results also show the importance of personal experiences and of a large vocabulary in students' understanding of these phenomena. There seem to be a great potential to improve students' learning about matter transformation by creating an atmosphere that gives students opportunities to talk about, investigate and discuss their personal experiences and ideas in different contexts. All these findings can contribute to an improvement of teaching about scientific phenomena.

Bibliography

Andersson, B. (1990). Pupils' conceptions of matter and its transformations (age 12-16). Studies in Science Education, 18, 53-85.

Bar, V. & Galili, I. (1994). Stages of childrens' views about evaporation. International Journal of Science Education, 16 (2), 157-174.

Duit, R., Treagust, D.F., & Mansfield, H. (1996). Investigating student understanding as a prerequisite to improving teaching and learning in science and mathematics. In D.F. Treagust, Duit, R. & Fraser, B. J. (eds.) Improving teaching and learning in science and mathematics (pp. 17-31). New York: Teachers College Press.

Ginsburg, H. P. (1997). Entering the Child's Mind. Cambridge: University Press.

Helldén, G. (1999). A longitudinal study of pupils' understanding of conditions for life, growth, and decomposition. In Bandiera, M., Caravita, S., Torracca, E. & Vicentini, M. (Eds.): Science education research in Europe. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Helldén, G. (2001). Personal context and continuity of human thought; recurrent themes in a longitudinal study of pupils' understanding of scientific phenomena. In H. Behrendt, H. Dahncke, R. Duit, W. Gräber, M. Komarek, A. Kross & P. Reiska, (Eds). Research in science Education - Past, Present and Future. Dordrecht. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Holgersson, I (2001) Young children and molecules – examples from a longitudinal study on children's views of matter. Paper presented at ESERA-3, Thessaloniki, Aug 2001.

Holgersson, I. & Löfgren, L. (2003): A long-term study of students' explanations of transformations of matter. Accepted for publication in The Canadian Journal for Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education.

Johnson, P. (2002). Children's understanding of substances, part 2: Explaining chemical change. (to be published in International Journal of Science Education)

Novak, J. D. (1993). Human Constructivism: A Unification of Psychological and Epistemological Phenomena in Meaning Making. International Journal of Personal Construct Psychology, 6, 167-193.

Novak, J.D. & Musonda, D. (1991). A twelve-year longitudinal study of science concept learning. American Educational Research Journal, 28(1), 117-153.

Osborne, R. & Cosgrove, M. (1983). Childrens' conceptions of the changes of state of water. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 20 (9), 825-838.

Tytler, R. (2000). A comparison of year 1 and year 6 students' conceptions of evaporation and condensation: dimensions of conceptual progression. International Journal of Science Education, 22 (5), 447-467.

White, R. (2001). The revolution in research on science teaching. In V. Richardsson (ed.) Handbook of Research on Teaching. New York: Macmillan.