COMPARING THE EFFECTS OF TEXTBOOK AND INNOVATIVE VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS ON STUDENTS' CONCEPTUALIZATION OF FAMILIAR ASTRONOMY PHENOMENA
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Students' understanding of astronomy concepts was compared when taught with traditional textbook images versus specially designed visual representations (VRs). Students who learned with the specially designed VRs performed better, producing more scientifically accurate drawings and explanations and scoring higher on a baseline test. The specially designed VRs were more effective at addressing student misconceptions. Future work will explore combining specially designed VRs with laboratory activities.
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COMPARING THE EFFECTS OF TEXTBOOK AND INNOVATIVE VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS ON STUDENTS' CONCEPTUALIZATION OF FAMILIAR ASTRONOMY PHENOMENA
- 1. Comparing the effects of textbook and innovative visual representations on students’ conceptualization of familiar astronomy phenomena I. Testa1, S. Galano1, A. Colantonio2, S. Leccia3, E. Puddu3 1 Department of Phisics «E. Pancini», University Federico II di Napoli 2 School of Science and Technologies, University of Camerino 3 INAF – Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte, Naples Southern Annular Eclipse. Image Credit & Copyright: Cameron McCarty, Matthew Bartow, Michael Johnson - MWV Observatory, Coca-Cola Space Science Center, Columbus State University Eclipse Team 1
- 2. Introduction Students’ interpretation of visual representation Research Question Theoretical Framework Visual language The Kress & Van Leuwen model Methods Research design Sample Instruments Data Analysis Results Drawings Explanations Baseline Test Conclusions Discussion Future steps 2Testa & al.
- 4. Testa & al. Students’ interpretation of science VRs • Unclear support of textbooks Visual Representations (VRs) to students’ effective understanding (Bowen & Roth, 2002) • Photographs, drawings, and diagrams do not guarantee greater effectiveness in communicating scientific concepts (Mayer and Sims, 1994; Roth et al., 2005) • Specific support needed to take full advantage of VRs (Schnotz, 2002; 2005) 4
- 5. Testa & al. • Content area where textbooks VRs have often been criticized (Ojala, 1992; Testa, Leccia & Puddu, 2014) • Astronomical phenomena VRs may be complex or ambiguous: • require a domain-specific knowledge • not consistent with students’ perception-based models (Vosniadou, 2010) • two-dimensional representations (Kikas, 1998; Duschl, et al., 2007; Barab et al. 2000; Hansen et al., 2004) Visual Representations in Astronomy 5
- 6. Testa & al. Research Question How are students’ reasoning strategies about familiar astronomy phenomena influenced by different types of Visual Representations? 6
- 8. Testa & al. How to analyze science VRs? • Scientific texts are multimodal (Lemke, 1998): • Verbal • Mathematical • Visual • Knowledge of visual language (Schnotz, 2002): • how information are encoded • awareness of semantic and interpretative processes 8
- 9. Testa & al. How to analyze science VRs? (Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996) 9
- 10. Testa & al. Use of Kress & Leuwen model • To identify difficulties in reading VRs (Pintò, 2002; Testa et al., 2014) • To design innovative images that may overcome such difficulties (Galano et al., 2018) 10
- 11. Methods 11
- 12. Testa & al. Targeted phenomena Change of Season Moon Phases Eclipses 12
- 13. Testa & al. Research design • Five “innovative” VRs designed: • two for seasonal changes • one for Moon phases • two for solar/lunar eclipses • The texts accompanying the VRs featured basic explanation of the phenomena 13
- 14. Testa & al. 14 Specially designed vs. Textbooks Images
- 15. Testa & al. 15 Specially designed vs. Textbooks Images
- 16. Testa & al. Sample 68 high school students Average age 13.8 y Group 1 24 students Textbook VRs Group 2 23 students Specially designed VRs Group 3 21 students No VRs 16
- 17. Testa & al. Instruments and time line • Drawing task (1 for each phenomenon) • Written task (2 for each phenomenon) • Mixed multiple choice true/false baseline questionnaire with 24 questions, eight for each of the three phenomena. Pre Test Instruction (10 hs) Post Test 17
- 18. Testa & al. Why drawings • Effective tool to: • access reasoning strategies and mental models (Ainsworth, Prain, & Tytler, 2011) • study pupils’ ability to give meaning to the depicted representation (Cox, 2005) • elicit misconceptions (e.g. Vosniadou & Brewer, 1994) • promote memory, observation, and imagination (Neu and Berglund, 1991; Stein and Power, 1996) • analyze how students select and capture features of natural phenomena (Cox, 2005) 18
- 19. Testa & al. Data Analysis Drawings Exploratory Factor Analysis of drawings (Libarkin et al., 2015) models of the phenomena Seasons: Moon Phases Eclipses Distance Inclination Sequence Sun Alignment Shading 19
- 20. Testa & al. 20 Example models from FA of seasons drawings Distance
- 21. Testa & al. 21 Example models from FA of seasons drawings Inclination
- 22. Testa & al. Data Analysis Categories of written tasks Correct Partial Incorrect Unclear Baseline test (total score = 30) 2 point correct answer 1 point (i) partial answer choice (ii) correct T/F 0 points blanks or wrong answers. 22
- 23. Results 23
- 24. Testa & al. Drawings 24 Textbook VRs Specially Designed VRs No VRs
- 25. Testa & al. Correct explanations 25 Textbook VRs Specially Designed VRs No VRs
- 26. Testa & al. Baseline Test 26Testa & al. Textbook VRs Specially Designed VRs No VRs
- 27. Conclusions 27
- 28. Testa & al. Conclusions • Specially designed VRs more effective than usual textbook VRs: • “correct” drawings • scientifically acceptable explanations • addressing student’s misconceptions • No image better than wrong (Ojala, 1992), 28
- 29. Testa & al. Conclusions Suggestions for an effective use of VRs in astronomy education: • visual emphasis should be put on the relationships between different but related representations of the same phenomenon; • graphical features should focus students’ attention on the main factors underlying the represented phenomena. 29
- 30. Testa & al. • Study the effect of refutational images (Mason et al., 2018) • Combe the effect of specially designed images and laboratory activities (Galano et al., in preparation) Future steps 30
- 31. More information can be found in: galano@fisica.unina.it italo.testa@unina.it @italo_testa @SilviaGalano 31Testa & al. I. Testa, S. Leccia, & E. Puddu, Astronomy textbook images: do they really help students? Phys. Ed. 49, 332 2198 (2014) S. Galano, A. Colantonio, S. Leccia, I. Marzoli, E. PudduI & I. Testa, Developing the use of visual representations to explain basic astronomy phenomena Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. Focused Collection on Astronomy Education Research (2018) S. Galano, F. Monti, G. Bozzo, C. Daffara, & I. Testa Investigating the interplay of practical work and visual representations on students’ misconceptions: the case of seasons Girep 2018 Selected Contributions (in press)
Editor's Notes
- In this presentation, we will discuss a study in which we compare the effect of textbook and specially designed images about familiar astronomical phenomena
- This is a brief outline: first our aims, then we describe the theoretical framework, hence the adopted methods. We will go through some of our results and finally we will draw some conclusions
- Some authors suggest that textbooks Visual Representations (VRs) do not always help students making sense of graphs and diagrams because they are often not connected to the text or other representations that convey the same information Specific support is needed to take full advantage of VRs. When such support is lacking, or when representations are oversimplified or impoverished, the sole presence of photographs, drawings, and diagrams in school textbooks does not guarantee a greater effectiveness in communicating scientific concepts
- Astronomy is a content area where textbooks VRs have often been criticized (Ojala, 1992; Testa, Leccia & Puddu, 2014) Astronomical phenomena VRs may be complex or ambiguous because they require a domain-specific knowledge to be correctly interpreted and are often not consistent with students’ perception-based models are two-dimensional representations of phenomena that occur in a three-dimensional space
- So this is our research question
- Scientific texts can be considered in general multimodal (Lemke, 1998), featuring different modes (verbal, mathematical, and visual), interacting with each other. To know the visual language adopted in science implies to know how information are encoded in scientific representations through the representational syntax Knowledge of visual language involves the awareness of semantic and interpretative processes at the basis of communication through visual representations (Schnotz, 2002)
- The classificatory representations define a relationship or taxonomy of the represented elements. The analytical representations define a relationship or a part-whole type structure. The symbolic representations define a relationship on the basis of a meaning provided by the reader.
- To identify difficulties in the interpretation of the message encoded within the image due to combining together different types of representations (Pintò, 2002; Testa et al., 2014) To design innovative images that may overcome such difficulties (Galano et al., 2018)
- To analyze how student reality in order to construct pattern of reasoning about
- To analyze drawing we used the approach by Julie Libarkin
- Just to give you an example of the models extracted through the factor analysis, we report here two examples concerning seasons
- Frequency of correct answers in the written task for the three groups. Correct answers grouped together levels : 85% for seasons; 60% for Moon phases and 90% for eclipses
- Specially designed VRs were more effective than usual textbook VRs in helping students produce informed drawings and correct explanations of the three target phenomena The analysis of the pre-post scores to the baseline questionnaire supports the evidence that specific designed VRs resulted more efficient with respect to usual textbook VRs in addressing student’s misconceptions A possible interpretation of this evidence is that usual textbook VRs do not put enough emphasis on students’ misconceptions, but rather reinforce some of them For instance, the distance misconception may be reinforced adopting an emphasized elliptical orbit in VRs about seasonal changes (Lee, 2010)
- Summarizing, while our results support criticism to usual textbook VRs (Ojala, 1992), they provide also the following suggestions for an effective use of VRs in astronomy education: visual emphasis should be put on the relationships between different but related representations of the same phenomenon; graphical features should focus students’ attention on the main factors underlying the represented phenomena.