Em ergent Stud ent Concep tions of Geolog ic Tim e a nd their Im p - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Jaso n Mo rphew , Ro bb Lindgren, and David Bro w n

Un iversity o f Illin o is at Urban a-Cham paign

Em ergent Stud ent Concep tions of Geolog ic Tim e a nd their Im p lica tions for Em bod ied Lea rning

Embodied Learning Augmented through Simulation Theaters for Interacting with Cross-Cutting Concepts in Science

• Individuals are able to place geologic events

in correct relative order, however are less able t0 place events in absolute order (Catley & Novick, 2009; Cheek, 2012).

• Timelines exhibit temporal compression

(Libarkin et al., 2007)

• Students’ difficulties in understanding

geologic time may be due to several factors, which most likely work in concert (Cheek, 2010). –Use of events to measure time (Resnick, Atit, and Shipley, 2012). –Lack of content knowledge (Delgado, 2013; Libarkin et al., 2005). –Inability to conceptualize large numbers

• r engage in proportional reasoning

(Cheek, 2012; Hidalgo and Otero, 2004).

This study addresses two questions.

• 1) How do students understand and make

sense of large numbers when reasoning about time?

• 2) How do students draw upon this

informal reasoning when asked to create a formal geologic timeline?

Interview Tasks and Procedure

• Students enrolled in Educational Psychology (N = 13)

completed task-based interviews.

• Students were first asked to think about how they understood
• r made sense of different units of time.
• They were then asked to explain their answers using gestures

to highlight the differences between several time intervals.

• Finally, the participants were explicitly asked to create a

geologic timeline.

Event

• Approx. Time

Invention of the phone 100 years First Europeans to sail to America 1,000 years First use of fire 1,000,000 years Extinction of Dinosaurs 65,000,000 years Dinosaurs Appeared 230,000,000 years First Life Appeared 3,000,000,000 years Formation of the Earth 5,000,000,000 years

Framework for analysis

• Student conceptions viewed as dynamically emergent

structures which can be viewed through three different lenses (Brown, 1992; 2014).

Visual Differences as a Conscious Model for Time

“One hundred years would be more recent in terms

• f today. Like society would have been different

but it wouldn’t have been as different, like, as drastic a change from one thousand years ago.” ~ Samantha

Elizabeth

“I can’t imagine what that was like. It was so different from where we are now.” “Based on what scientists have found, and stuff like that, you could show them pictures of what supposedly what Earth used to be like. And like the way it’s changed and stuff like

• that. And that might help them see how much,
• r how long ago it was and how much has

changed”

Context Affects the Conscious Model

Deanna

5 billion 3 billion 230 million

Implicit models

• Conceptions of time draw upon our spatial

understandings and experiences (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999).

Time Metaphors

• “We are getting close to the deadline.”
• “We got through the busy part of the

semester.”

• “The time for action has passed.”
• “The concert will be here soon.”

Image from Casasanto, and Jasmin (2012)

Moving Attention Perspective

Images adapted from Gentner, Imai, and Boroditsky (2002)

5 billion 3 billion 230 million 1000 100

Amanda

1 million 1000 100

Size of time interval depends on when it occurred

Deanna Amanda

Educational Implications

First Attempt After Gesturing

• Educational interventions which include

embodied or experiential components are beneficial (Hester, 2008) .

– Use rich description of the environment, biota, and geology of the different geologic times. – Emphasize the hierarchical relationships between geological events (Resnick, et. al., 2012) – Embodied immersive mixed reality simulations show promise.

Educational Implications

Questions?

jmorphe2@illinois.edu http:/ / elastics.education.illinois.edu