The Multiple Purposes for Fifth-Grade Students' Engagement in Modeling

• In Event: Poster Session 8
  In Poster Session: Research in Science Learning and Teaching Poster Session 1

Abstract

Reform efforts call for students to engage in constructing and evaluating knowledge as a sense making enterprise that is similar to the work professional scientists and engineers. Engineering is a fairly new discipline in the K-12 setting and, as such, is less well defined and is presented in the Next Generation Science Standards as a field and method for student learning of science. In our research we examine fifth grade students’ purposes for engaging in a key science and engineering practice – modeling. We present findings that suggest fifth grade students have varied purposes for modeling, which are complex and dynamically shift in ways that support their sense making.

Authors

• jennifer schellinger, The Florida State University

• Lama Ziad Jaber, Florida State University

• Sherry A. Southerland, Florida State University