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Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Models and modelling activities play a central role in the making and understanding of science [1],
making the learning of science more meaningful and helping students to build appropriate mental
models [2, 3]. When students learn with models, they build mental ones that are more consistent with
scientific models. This reconstruction process is generally complex and generates many cognitive
conflicts. It was only in the early 19th century, when J. Hall (1761-1832) resorted to models to
corroborate plutonism, that geology, an eminent field science, became a laboratory science.
Throughout the years, these models became dimensioned with rules of proportionality, thus acquiring
the status of representations of natural phenomena. In the last 30 years experimental modelling has
been a subject of fruitful research, mainly using the classic tectonic sandbox models to control
parameters for the structural evolution of mountain belts [4]. However, models were integrated in
geoscience textbooks for educational purposes and, veiled behind them, many mandatory analogue
properties, which are required for research purposes, where forgotten. In fact, many of those
modelling activities didn’t resort to analogue materials with similar geologic properties, nor did they
respect the dynamics, kinematics and geometric similarities. Indeed, respecting the similarity rules is a
difficult, time-consuming and an expensive process that may not be justified in some educational
purposes. However it is necessary that teachers and textbooks have correct information regarding
modelling activities and the kind of analogy they provide. The reduction of time and of space that
underlays those geoscience lab activities, as well as the heuristic rule of the models used in
geoscience classrooms, needs to be well explained to students. Thus, it is worthwhile to analyze the
modelling activities in geoscience textbooks, in order to evaluate their nature and whether or not the
syllabus purposes can be accomplished. To do so, an instrument designed to analyze model activities
of geoscience textbooks was developed guarantying a reliable, comprehensive and systematic study.
Bearing in mind some items and issues that arose from other instruments designed to analyze lab
activities, and after reviewing the literature, a first version of the checklist was developed. It
encompassed three main dimensions: type of lab activity; type of manipulation of variables; type of
models. All three dimensions included a few sub-dimensions further specified. As in other studies [5],
the sub-dimensions emerged from the literature as well as from our knowledge on how lab-modelling
activities are dealt with in science textbooks. Four researchers carefully undertook the process of
analyzing the 35 lab activities from three geoscience textbooks, in two rounds. The results of the first
round were presented to all researchers in order to promote reflection and an improvement of the
checklist. A consensus was established after the second round, which was applied one month after
the end of the first analysis. Although developed by resorting to Portuguese textbooks, the checklist
may be used as a referential for a more comprehensive and meaningful analysis of textbooks from
other countries, a task that can be regarded as a follow up study, further increasing its validity.
Description
Keywords
Checklist Geoscience education Modelling Preliminary studies
Citation
Clara Vasconcelos, Joana Faria, António Almeida, Luís Dourado: Geology in the lab: preliminar studies for validating a checklist for analysing modelling activities in textbooks. ICERi Proceedings 2014, Spain; 11/2014, DOI:10.13140/2.1.5023.3923