Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 299 de 957
Session 3: Wednesday afternoon
Topic: Learning strategies 2 – Chair: Cynthia J. Atman
A Variation Theory Approach to Develop Learning Progressions for Engineering
Concepts
Context
Su Swarat
s-swarat@northwestern.edu
Northwestern University, Evanston
United States of America
Gregory Light
g-light@northwestern.edu
Northwestern University, Evanston
United States of America
Eun-Jung Park
ohiopark@gmail.com
Ewha
Women’s University, Seoul,
Korea
Denise Drane
d-drane@northwestern.edu
Northwestern University, Evanston
United States of America
Abstract: Learning progressions are a useful tool for describing the
development of student understanding and for informing instructional practice.
In this paper, we describe how we have applied Variation Theory to develop a
learning progression for “size and scale” that is grounded in empirical data on
student's conceptual understanding. We argue that this approach not only offers
a systematic way of describing levels of understanding from students’ exhibited
conceptions, but also generates learning progressions with unique features that
may offer advantages over traditional learning progressions.
Learning progressions provide “descriptions of the successively more sophisticated ways
of thinking about a topic that can follow one another as students learn about and
investigate a topic over a broad span of time” (Duschl, Schweingruber, & Shouse, 2007,
p.214). They can generate specific guidelines for structuring curricula, guiding instruction,
and assessing learning (Catley, Lehrer, & Reiser, 2005; Duschl et al., 2007; Smith, Wiser,
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011