Current Affiliations
- Doctoral Program in Mathematics and Science Education (MSED), School
of Education
- Scientific Reasoning Research Institute, College of
Natural Sciences and Mathematics
Book News
Several new books are available:
Clement, John (2008). Creative Model Construction in Scientists and Students: The Role of Imagery, Analogy, and Mental Simulation. Dordrecht: Springer
This monograph presents a theory of creativity and imagery based conceptual learning in science that was developed on the basis of think aloud protocols from experts and students.
How do scientists use analogies and other processes to break away from old theories and generate new ones? This book documents such methods through the analysis of video tapes of scientifically trained experts thinking aloud while working on unfamiliar problems. Some aspects of creative scientific thinking are difficult to explain, such as the power of analogies, the use of physical intuition, and the enigmatic ability to learn from thought experiments. The book examines the hypothesis that these processes are based on imagistic mental simulation as an underlying mechanism. This allows the analysis of insight ("Aha!") episodes of creative theory formation. Advanced processes examined include specialized conserving transformations, Gedanken experiments, and adjusted levels of divergence in thinking. Student interviews are used to show that students have natural abilities for many of the same basic reasoning and model construction processes and that this has important implications for expanding instructional theories of conceptual change and inquiry.
Springer, Order Department, PO Box 2485, Secaucus, NJ 07096-2485
Tel: 1-800-Springer (NYC), Fax: 1-201-348-4505, Email: orders-ny@springer.com
Clement, John , Rea-Ramirez, Mary Anne, Editors (2008). Model Based Learning and Instruction in Science. Dordrecht: Springer.
This is a collection of studies by our research team that describes new, model based teaching methods in science instruction and presents research results on their characteristics and effectiveness.
This book describes new, model based teaching methods for science instruction. It presents research that describes these new methods in a very diverse group of settings: middle school biology, high school physics, and college chemistry classrooms. Mental models in these areas such as understanding the structure of the lungs or cells, molecular structures and reaction mechanisms in chemistry, or causes of current flow in electricity are notoriously difficult for many students to learn. Yet these lie at the core of conceptual understanding in these areas. Six different levels of organization for teaching strategies are described, from those operating over months (design of the sequence of units in a curriculum) to those operating over minutes (teaching tactics for guiding discussion minute by minute).
Preconceptions in Mechanics:
Lessons Dealing With Conceptual Difficulties
by Charles Camp and John Clement. Contributing authors: David Brown, Kimberly Gonzalez, John Kudukey, James Minstrell, Klaus Schultz, Melvin Steinberg, Valerie Veneman, and Aletta Zietsman. 2nd Edition, 2008.
The nine units in this high school physics curriculum focus on areas where students have exhibited qualitative preconceptions -- ideas that they bring to class with them prior to instruction in physics. Research has shown that certain preconceptions conflict with the physicist's point of view. It has also shown that some of these conflicting preconceptions are quite persistent and seem to resist change in the face of normal instructional techniques. The motivating idea for this book is to provide a set of lessons that are aimed specifically at these particularly troublesome areas and that use special techniques for dealing with them. Ideas in the lessons can be used to supplement any course that includes mechanics.
Write Charles Camp at ccamp@psych.umass.edu for availability.
Current Research Projects:
-Visual Modeling Strategies In Science Teaching
This is a 3-year NSF-funded project to find principles of instruction for developing students' visualizable models in science, including design principles for curriculum development, technological tools, and new pedagogical principles. It will pursue specific aspects of this goal by conducting detailed studies of teaching and learning in the context of innovative model based curricula in middle school biology, and in middle and high school physical science. Two parallel tracks of the research are:
• Studies of classroom interaction patterns fostering the learning of visual models.
• Analyzing the use of computer simulations and animations in large class discussions to scaffold students' ability to construct their own animated mental models.
- Model Construction Processes in Experts
This 3-year NSF-funded project complements and provides input to the one above by attempting to understand model construction and learning processes in expert scientists, with an emphasis on the roles of analogy, imagery, and thought experiments. (See description of Creative Model Construction in Scientists and Students book above .)
Graduate Study in Science Education
Department of Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies
School of Education
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
The School of Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst offers graduate
programs leading to the M.Ed., C.A.G.S., and Ed.D. degrees with specializations in
science and mathematics education.
On-going projects in the department include:
- Cognitive Analyses of Conceptual Understanding And Learning
Processes in Science
- Evaluation of Educational Programs
- Online Science Learning Program
- Student's Ways of Reasoning in Mathematics>
- Computer Systems for Teaching, Instructional Multimedia, and
Intelligent Tutors
An application can be ordered at:
http://www.umass.edu/umhome/admissions/index.html
or contact The Graduate School, Goodell Bldg., U. of Massachusetts,
Amherst, MA 01003; 413-545-0721
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