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More Hypothesis Templates

In an earlier post, I introduced the idea of "hypothesis templates," a device intended to help students learn to generate plausible hypotheses from spatial information. I'm still struggling with the question of how do people, either experienced geoscientists or beginning students, generate meaning from information about the position, configuration, trajectory, orientation or shape of objects or phenomena in the real world. Over the last few days, my collaborators and I have been going through student products from the Lamont Data Puzzle Project, a curriculum development project. Whenever we instructed the students to "Suggest a hypothesis to explain [the observations they had just made from data]," many students struggled and came up with little to nothing.

So today, I offer hypothesis templates for two additional common types of observations. More

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The Meaning of "Meaning": Causes & Consequences

In an earlier post, I asked "how is it that skilled spatial thinkers can construct meaningful inferences from observations of shape, size, position, orientation, configuration or trajectory of objects or phenomena of the Earth and environment?"

It seems to me that "meaningful inferences " fall into two broad categories: causes and consequences. What processes caused the observed spatial phenomena to be the way they are? And, what are the consequences or implications of the observed spatial phenomena? More

"Hypothesis templates" for extracting meaning from spatial information

(Adapted from reflective essay written for the DFG/NSF Spatial Cognition Workshop July 2009, New York)

Extracting meaning from spatial data does not come easily for many students. On its surface, a geospatial representation comprises dots, squiggles and blotches of color. The process of turning these dots, squiggles and blotches into a scientific explanation seems woefully underconstrained. Where is a student to start? How is it that skilled spatial thinkers can construct meaningful inferences about causal processes from observations of shape, size, position, orientation, configuration or trajectory of objects or phenomena? What scaffolding can an educator put in place to help a mystified student begin to think methodically and productively about spatial data, without simply telling them the answer?

I suggest that it may be possible and useful to equip such students with a suite of "hypothesis templates" that correspond with distinctive, frequently-observed spatial patterns. More