Assessment of Student Mental Model Development
Bruce Herbert, Texas A&M University
What learning is this evaluation activity designed to assess?
Students organize scientific knowledge and reason about environmental issues by manipulating internally-constructed, mental models. The environmental sciences, which focus on the study of complex, dynamic systems, may present unique cognitive difficulties to students in their development of authentic, accurate mental models of surficial earth systems.
We seek to develop and assess student mental model development through immersion in inquiry units that couple information technology (IT)-based simulations aand visualizations with physical models. The components of the inquiry modules used in this study include manipulation of multiple representations, the development and testing of conceptual models based on available evidence, and exposure to authentic, complex and ill-constrained problems.
We characterized student cognition based on formative assessment of expressions of student mental models, including discourse and concept maps, and rubric-based evaluations of learning products. Imperfect conceptions and the lack of complexity and completeness in their representations of the studied systems were revealed in expressions of student mental models.
What is the nature of the teaching/learning that your evaluation has been designed to assess?
The most recent conceptualizations of the nature of science (Cartwright, 1983; Longino, 2002; Nersessian, 1999; Suppe, 1989) (1) emphasizes the role of models and data construction in the scientific process and demotes the role of theory, (2) sees the scientific community as an essential part of the scientific process, and (3) sees the cognitive scientific processes as a distributed system that includes instruments and other tools.
Scientific models are external aids to reasoning--they are cognitive prostheses. Just as we now conceive the scientific community as a fundamental part of the process, the models are also a fundamental part and the cognitive processes should be thought of as being distributed throughout the system of people, instruments and models. (Hutchins, 1995) (Giere, 2002).
We are working on developing asssessment methods that make student thinking visible as they reason about their conceptual models of complex earth systems.
What advice would you give others using this evaluation?
A clear and consistent assessment plan throughout a course can ease implementation issues.
What particular aspects would you like feedback on?
We seek aadditional tools that can make student thinking visible as learning is occuring, especially if it can be embedded with Internet-based activities.