1. Results DiscussionIntroduction
Methods & Procedure
Implication
Student Ideas About Seasons
Preeti Sahu
Syracuse University
Dept. of Physics, PHY 600
29th Nov 2015
My AST TA class, a heterogeneous blend of
students from different non-science majors,
is an ideal place to study students’ perception
of ‘how seasons are caused’.
The innocuous looking tilt in Earth’s
rotational axis has got a profound impact-
change in seasons. But a majority of people
do not understand this completely. A peek
into the process of learning, can help us
teach students more effectively so that they
appreciate the importance of doing science
and feel intellectually armed for such
everyday phenomena.
A literature search can give some vital input
on how to assess students’ understanding of
this topic. Following the directions, I framed a
questionnaire and provided it to 35 of my
students, as soon as they entered into the
class. By this time, they had already learnt
this topic in their theory class.
(Coincidentally, they also had a midterm the
very next day, assessing the same!)
1. What reasoning, did you believe, caused change in
seasons, prior to attending Christian's lecture on it?
2. What reasoning do you believe now?
3. Please draw your hometown by drawing a globe
(make are you label north up). What season do you
think it's having now?
4. What seasons do you think the equatorial regions
experience?
5. Do both hemispheres experience the same season
at a given point of time in a year?
6. Draw diagrams to explain your answer in 5th
question, based on your current belief.
46%
48%
6%
Question-4
Constant warm/ wet-dry Summer/Winter/Fall no response
Question-5 was an unequivocal -“No!”.
Similarly, the diagram made for the last
question was pretty similar to the samples
given below. The explanation given alongside
the diagrams (regarding flux) revealed that
the argument was quite convincing to them
too.
Almost everyone answered that their current
belief (after attending the theory class) is- the
flux change caused by tilt of earth’s rotational
axis.
Sadly, no one was from the Southern
hemisphere. Everyone except two, were from
a place in the Northern Hemisphere and
predicted that it is experiencing fall. The
remaining two were from a place near the
Equator. Their predictions are quite similar-
“No seasons, but getting a little colder”, “I
believe the equatorial regions are also
experiencing a mild fall”.
The first question aims at understanding the
pre-formed mental models and the rest to
assess if they’ve understood it properly in the
lecture.
The response is analyzed by counting the
number of students having similar answers.
1). Instead of hand-holding the students
through– ‘this is how people usually think and
this is the way you should think’, let them
postulate their own hypotheses by playing
around with the physical parameters [in a
simulation perhaps]. This develops their
metacognitive skills and gives better self
satisfaction than a black-box scaffolding.
2). A considerable amount of time should be
spent on negating popular beliefs too. Else
their previous mental model might hover
unresolved forever.
3). A small portion should be incorporated in
the lab work (simulation based ). It could be a
take home assignment to track the weather in
different places on earth all throughout the
semester and then relate it to their
geographical attributes.
4). Catchy one-liners do a good job in
imprinting themselves in students’ minds but
sometimes practicing is the only way to
actually understand the concept.
As far as pre-formed mental models are
concerned, the most prevalent one seems to
be- “the closer to the sun, the warmer.” It
could be biased because the response was
recorded after they learned about most
popular misconceptions in the class.
Regarding conceptual grasp, the class seems
well aware of the key points i.e. the actual
reasoning and the diagrams (invariably
everyone sketched the exact diagram that is
conventionally used for teaching). But, when
it comes to applying the concept, the
degeneracy breaks. To confirm this, one can
elaborate question-4 such that they also
reason out their prediction. One can then
deduce the mental modes that prevents them
to reach to the correct answer.
Please note that the way of putting forth the
questions might have affected the results
(this can be checked by testing the same
content with a differently prepared question
set). Some probably misunderstood question-
4 as- ‘what season is it in the equator now’.
References
• “Seasons reasons” (October 2005) retrieved from
www.scienceu.com
• Jessica Fries-Gaither (August 2011) “Sunrise, Sunset: Learning
About Seasons” retrieved from
http://beyondpenguins.ehe.osu.edu/
• “The Sun and the Earth” retrieved from
http://education.nationalgeographic.org/
• Schoenfeld (1987)- “Metacognition”
• Redish (1994)- “Mental Models”
• Etkina et al (2005)- “Scaffolding”
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