Modeling with young students—Quantitative and qualitative
Tóm tắt
THIS ARTICLE COMPLEMENTS the one onMaking Models and Reasoning with Them in this journal in Spring 1997 (Vol 8). The paper is about the Tools for Exploratory Learning Programme, which was part of an ESRC national initiative on Information Technology in Education. The research created both tasks and tools to investigate the quality and nature of pupils’ reasoning when using three kinds of modeling tools (quantitative, qualitative and semiquantitative, this latter kind of modeling was the focus of the 1997 article). Tasks and tools were used in two innovative modes of learning: expressive, where pupils created their own models, and exploratory, where pupils investigated an expert’s model. Cross curricular tasks covered three topics: health, shops and profits, and traffic congestion. Average pupils, girls and boys between 11 and 14 years, each worked with one tool, on one task, in one mode of learning. After having either created or explored a model, pupils where asked to modify their own or another’s model and/or build new ones. This article focuses on the qualitative and quantitative modeling. Our findings showed that all pupils could construct a model, even if limited, in expressive tasks, with both tools. With quantitative tasks all pupils could build some model, almost exclusively from binary relations. With qualitative tasks, (where the tool linked situations and actions) generation of actions was easy for all, but situations were more difficult for about half the pupils. However, nearly all pupils generated fairly complex interconnected structures. When exploring quantitative models many pupils saw the model as generating one answer. With qualitative models, the action-situation structure was understood by the majority and about half showed some appreciation of the nature of the model as a whole.
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