conceptual change and learning

As part of my Ph.D. work, I am reviewing various models of learning, conceptual change for learning. I am planning to review the works of Piaget, Carey, Thagard, Nersessian, Keil, Chi, Vosniadou, Ausubel, etc. and trying to characterize their models of learning.

I shall post the review, once an initial draft is ready.

visit to somaiya college for depmap workshop

Today I planned a visit to K.J.Somaiya college of science, vidyavihar with regard to plan for organizing depmap workshop for teachers. I met the faculty from physics, chemistry, biology, botany, microbiology, education departments of junior as well as senior college.

I explained about the objectives of the depmap workshop and since it is to build a teaching sequence, it would be useful if teachers themselves create their dependency maps using the web based portal in the hands-on workshop to be conducted in gnowledge lab, hbcse.  Teacher have got a fair understanding as I also showed them some featured maps picked out from the portal.

Overall, all the teachers whom i met are interested to participate in the depmap workshop. Teachers from each department will be participating in the workshop in april, may, june.

Initially the visit was planned for about an hour, but my visit got extended for more than 2 hours. Actually I have studied for H.S.C., B.Sc. & M.Sc. from Somaiya college. When i was meeting the teachers, i too got nostalgic and to my surprise, most of the teachers could remember me as their student. So my visit got extended as I met my teachers in the corridor, labs, and was talking about my work and research. A few teachers also were keen to know about my Ph.D. work in the area of biology education. My teachers were glad to know about my progress, i being an alumni of somaiya.

I was thrilled to go back to my college, to my teachers and convey my contribution to science education.

depmap on activity—who got the food

i was mapping the topic who got the food from chapter 4- looking at
animals from the small science curriculum for class III. and this is
the route that i followed to map.

depmap on food eating habits

an interesting depmap to build a thread as :
inorder to understand the concept of animals, one need to first
observe some animals, their food eating habits. the latter can be
understood in the context of an activity. once these activities are
performed one can categorize and classify which animals eat what kind
of food and then may be understand the concept of a dog, cat, and then progressively the concept of an animal.

Small Science Curriculum is an activity based curriculum developed by
HBCSE. It focusses on teaching science through activities.

“what the learner already knows” & depmap

I have been reading Ausubel’s classroom assimilation theory (1978) from time to time as his theory has form the basis of the prevailing science education research especially in the area of concept maps.

Ausubel’s principle, “what the learner already knows” means that students come to the classroom with a prior understanding of science through their everyday experience, commom sense knowledge, etc. He further goes ahead and suggests that we as science educators need to ascertain this fact first and “teach the learner accordingly”.

Now that we are creating a network of pre-requisite concepts or a dependency network for a teaching sequence, we are claiming that there are certain concepts which the learner should understand first and then progressively learn the further depending concepts.

I am just trying to make connections with the depmap work and Ausubel’s principle.

People are welcome to create dependency network (depmap) atwww.gnowledge.org.

One can view some featured maps. A few sample of depmaps from physics, chemistry and biology are featured for providing a glimpse of the depmaps.

focus group meeting

During the episteme3, our presentations on Refined Concept Maps, gnowledge.org generated interest among few participants. A focus group meeting for more interaction, collaboration was planned after today’s lunch. The members included Dr. Vrunda Prabhu, Dr. Brian, Prof. H.C.Pradhan, Dr. Nagarjuna, Ms. Meena. The group from City University, New York have  a repository of concept maps on mathematics based on their research work, students’ essays, etc. Prof. Pradhan shared his research on concept maps on physics and ways to analyze the concepts based on the links, distance. Our research group (Nagarjuna and Meena) shared our  research work on refined concept maps on biology  domain, and how the gnowledge.org can help build a  roadmap of knowledge from any given domain. The group also discussed on how to use the cognitive distance, semantic proximity for analyzing the concepts in a network.

This seems a useful outcome of the episteme-3 conference for our research group. Let us see how it proceeds.

promising strands for future episteme conferences

Today, on the last day of the episteme-3 conference, we had a round table discussion on two issues: promising strands for episteme conferences; to build a community  of STME research in India. I was involved in the first round table. We reviewed the last episteme -1, episteme-2, and the current epistme-3 for the strands (or themes) of the conferences, and the outcomes. The main strands that episteme conferences will always be based on are: History and philsophy of science: its implications for science education; Cognitive basis of learning, pedagogy and curricular issues. From the discussion, atleast four strands have emerged which the participants are interested in the future epistemes. These have been: classroom based practices; affective factors in learning, science technology studies issues, integrating STME, assessment (to bring into focus), universalization of education.

The other topic also got a good involvement from the participants to building a community for science, technology, and mathematics education in India. Some of the suggestions are: to build research standards, develop knowledge portals, create summer programs, evaluate projects with collaborators, engaging with scientific institutes, universities, etc. etc.

These two topics of the round table discussion would enable us to concretize the strands of our future episteme conferences of HBCSE.

episteme-3

Our research study on Refined Concept Maps for Science Education: A Feasibility Study got presented today in the Episteme-3 conference in HBCSE, Mumbai, India. The main highlights of the paper presentation have been on demonstrating the students’ ease of using the refined concept maps i.e. to apply a minimal set of relation names (linking words), without any loss of knowledge. The RCM method was compared with other two methods: description and traditional concept maps. We applied ANOVA and T-Test for statistical analysis. The study indicated an increase in the number of correct relations for the domain of nucleus and mitochondria. The relation names served as facilitator or an anchoring device for representing knowledge.

Episteme 3 is part of Episteme series of biennial conferences that is organized by HBCSE.

apprentice scientist

Science can be fun when learning occurs through activity. Using the activity-based learning of science model, Prof. Nicole Ostrowsky of the University of Nice, has produced book on “The agenda of the apprentice scientist” (in french). The book has interesting hands-on activities, cartoons, puzzles, etc. to learn science. During her seminar today, she browsed through some of the chapters. For instance, in one of the chapters she starts by the question what sinks what floats. From this thread, she begins teaching physics (density of ice, water), snow, hail, rain (condensation), fractals (drawing and measuring snow flakes).

This method of teaching science is quite interdisciplinary, and it allows to integrate all the sciences while understanding one particular concept. She claims that her book is for the audience of age group from 7-70. Looking forward to the book.

conceptual dependency map

As part of the Structure and Dynamics of Knowledge project, our lab at HBCSE has developed  a web-based community portal for creating a repository of conceptual dependencies or pre-requisites that are required for creating a learning path in science education. A node is mapped with another node using the depends-on and required-for relations. These maps would aid in understanding how to create a sequence for teaching a particular topic.

One can join and create depmap at http://www.gnowledge.org and can also subscribe to the community mailing list.

Khoj 2008 – Gurgaon

Like last year, I was invited to be a judge for the International School Competition on Science Projects in DAV Public School at Gurgaon. The projects dealt on issues of Global warming, Future Energy Sources, IT, Clean and Green City, etc. Overall the students were very enthusiastic about their models but when it came to conceptual understanding the students were found to be not so competent.

Later on the second day, I was one of the panel members for the discussion on the topic of Science Education – A Challenge. This was held for the teachers. The other members of the panel were from IITD, NCL, BARC. The panel discussed on how the teachers can help the students to generate an interest towards science, about classroom learning, conceptual understanding, relating their learning with their daily experiences, etc.