Abstract
THE ARTICLE IS ABOUT Tools for Exploratory Learning Program. It is part of an ESRC National Initiative on Information Technology in Education which studied children’s modeling and reasoning with computational tools. The research involved creating both tasks and tools to investigate the quality and nature of pupils’ reasoning, when using three kinds of modelling tools (quantitative, qualitative, and semi-quantitative) in Expressive and Exploratory tasks. In the Expressive mode pupils created their own models and in the Exploratory mode they explored expert’s models. Three cross curricular topics for tasks were chosen: health, shops and profits, and traffic congestion.
Average pupils, girls and boys between 11–14 years of age, worked in one mode of learning, on one topic with one modeling tool. Pupils were further asked to modify their own or other models and/or to build new ones. Data collection and analysis was qualitative.
This paper focuses on semi-quantitative modeling in which the direction but not the numerical magnitude of effects of one part of a system on another is known. The study hypothesized that complex situations could be modeled using semi-quantitative arguments, much common sense reasoning being characterized in this manner. Our findings showed that young children between 11–14 could build reasonably complex models and reason with them when they were provided with a tool calling on their commonsense reasoning.
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References
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Joan Bliss is Professor at the University of Sussex and Director of the Institute of Education. She is a cognitive, developmental psychologist, having studied and worked with Jean Piaget for 10 years.
Her research concerns fundamentals of human thinking and reasoning. It studies how thinking and reasoning develop in young children, and how they can later be developed through teaching. Much of it concerns the special kinds of thinking and reasoning needed to understand science and mathematics, for example identifying variables and their relationships. The focus is consistently on matters of general cognitive importance, not on how to learn this or that topic a little better. She has investigated the nature of explanation, the problems of modeling physical reality, and the formation of abstract concepts and schemes.
She has a specific interest in how psychology can be applied to education. Her work bridges these two fields, finding coherence in addressing fundamental psychological issues in very practical contexts and in solving practical problems by applying psychological insights. She has also had a particularly interest in developing qualitative methods both data collection and analysis.
In the recent past Professor Bliss has directed six major funded projects, ranging from work related to differences between children’s and teacher’s explanation, teachers’ scaffolding strategies in mathematics and science, children and adult’s physical reasoning schemes, to the major national research programme discussed in this paper about children creating and reasoning with models.
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Bliss, J. Making models and reasoning with them. J. Comput. High. Educ. 8, 3–28 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02948600
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02948600