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Article Excerpt
The influence of open-ended problem solving by high school physics students as a classroom research activity assisted by computer simulation is investigated in this article. Specifically, the study is focused on changes in the understanding of physical phenomena, acquisition of procedural knowledge, use of simulation as a research tool by students, and changes in student attitudes and beliefs about science, science learning, and computer use.
The software was designed and developed by teacher in Borland Delphi for Windows 95. Because of the relatively few available computers in the school, and with the aim to know how different variables influence learning, a Solomon 4-group design was chosen. Each experimental group followed a different sequence of tasks. A pre and posttest was proposed to the student groups to assess their conceptual knowledge and attitudes toward computers and science.
The results suggested that the interactions among learners, software, and teacher in this activities-based learning framework encourages the development of problem-solving skills and conceptual understanding.
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Science is exciting to scientists because they are engaged in discovery and in creatively building and testing models to explain the world around them. However, in most courses of science, students "do" no science, but only listen to lectures about theories that have already been validated. Not only do students not have an opportunity to form their own ideas, they rarely get a chance to work in any substantial way at applying the ideas of others to the world around them (Thornton, 1987).
Moreover, physics textbooks usually include, almost exclusively, factual knowledge. Perhaps this is due to the difficulty of teaching procedural knowledge (e.g., formulating conjectures that can be tested, making predictions on the basis of experiments and data, setting up a hypothesis from a theory, constructing relationships between variables, controlling the variables involved in an experiment, establishing a strategy to solve a problem, recording qualitative and quantitative data, interpreting observations and data, establishing qualitative relationships), and attitudes about science (e.g., recognizing the influence of models on the construction of the scientific knowledge together with the provisional character of those models, an affective approach to science learning in general).
The idea that the development of mental models is crucial to understand the physical world has been the subject of many cognitive studies. Research into concept development has shown that people develop, on the basis of their everyday experience, well-articulated naive theories (also known as preconceptions, alternative models, or alternative frameworks) that describe the behavior of different phenomena. These theories deeply influence the student learning and are very resistant to change (Viennot, 1979; Driver, 1981). Piaget (1964) predicted that the process of conceptual change, that is, the modification from an established set of beliefs to another, may begin when the student is in a state of disequilibrium or dissonance. Many instructional strategies have been developed in attempting to change students' intuitive beliefs about physical phenomena.
One of these strategies, proposed by Nussbaum and Novick (1982), involved three stages:
1. An "exposing event" that requires pupil interpretation based upon their preconceptions.
2. A "discrepant event," which creates conflict between the exposed preconceptions and observed phenomena that can not be explained.
3. A "learning support environment" to aid the pupils' ongoing search for a viable explanation.
Several authors have implemented these and other strategies in computer simulations for middle and high school physics teaching (Zietsman & Hewson, 1986; Gorsky & Finegold, 1992; Ronen, Langley & Ganiel, 1992; Lewis, Stern, & Linn, 1993; Martinez, Leon, & Pontes, 1994; Trumper, 1994; Tao & Gunstone, 1999). Their experience shows that the application of computer simulation to physics teaching presents the following advantages:
* Simulation allows us to emulate natural phenomena hardly observable in a direct way.
* Students check their previous ideas by setting up and testing their own hypotheses, allowing a more autonomous form of learning.
* The learner gains a better understanding of the physical model related to the phenomenon being simulated.
* Simulation permits to study a specific part of the physics related to the chosen experiment, simplifying its comprehension by the student.
* Students can modify the different significant variables and initial conditions of the physical model, which helps them to draw their own conclusions.
* Simulation avoids the use of complex numerical calculations, being possible to pay more attention on conceptual aspects.
* Simulation provides the learner with meaningful data, which facilitate the qualitative and quantitative testing of physical laws.
* Simulation makes easier to acquire procedural knowledge (Friedler, Nachmias, & Linn, 1990) and positive attitudes about science.
PRELIMINARY RESEARCH
To take advantage of the aforementioned possibilities, the authors previously carried out a classroom investigation using educational simulators in a Spanish high school (Sierra & Perales, 1999). The simulation software was used as a cognitive tool or "mindtool" (Jonassen,1996) to engage and enhance thinking in learners. Software packages related to Newtonian mechanics, gravitation, and electronic circuits were evaluated to determine their contribution to the teaching and learning process for secondary education students. The experiment was carried out in an extracurricular workshop over three consecutive days. Previous to the computer activities, the participant students completed a test (the pretest) which allowed us to determine their preconceptions ("exposing event"). Then they solved different problems, helped by the teacher, using the simulation software Dinamic (Sierra, 1997), Gravity and Electronics WorkBench. The problems were designed to create a conflict between the students' preconceptions and the phenomena observed on the computer screen ("discrepant event"). The explanations of the teacher, the students' comments among themselves, and the online help screens of the software ("learning support environment") led to an effective process of discovery learning.
The same initial test was then completed by the students at the end of the experiment (posttest). There was a significant increase in the number...
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