WITHDRAWN Elementary Students’ Generation of Model-Based Explanations About the Water Cycle

• In Event: Modeling for Understanding and Reasoning

Abstract

Modeling is a theory-driven core scientific practice that enables users to reason scientifically about large, complex systems through developing a simplified abstract of the systems’ key components and connecting these components to the underlying explanatory cause known as the mechanism (NRC, 2012). However elementary students are rarely provided opportunities to make these connections. This study examines how third grade students generated explanations from their developed models of the water cycle and how their teachers supported them to do so. The models were completed before and after enactment of a widely-available off-the-shelf curricular unit about water. Our results indicate that elementary students are able to generate explanations from models but their teachers had difficulty in supporting them in this practice.

Authors

• Laura Zangori, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

• Cory T. Forbes, University of Nebraska - Lincoln

• Christina V. Schwarz, Michigan State University