Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 301 de 957
Theoretical Framework
Variation Theory
Developed from phenomenography , Variation Theory (Marton & Booth, 1997; Marton &
Tsui, 2004; Marton & Pang, 2006; Pang & Marton, 2005) views conceptions in terms of
awareness, and learning in terms of changes in the learner’s awareness structure as it
relates to a concept or a phenomenon in general. That is, different conceptions correspond
to awareness at different levels of complexity that are derived from different ways of
experiencing a phenomenon. The variation between conceptions is due to the different
aspects of the phenomenon that the learner is aware of, or is able to discern when he or
she experiences the phenomenon. The variation in learners’ awareness or how learners
experience a phenomenon can be described in terms of aspects or dimensions of variation
–“the different ways of experiencing something are differtent ways of experiencing the
same thing, the variation in ways of experiencing the same thing, the variation in ways of
experiencing it can be describe in terms of a set of dimensions of variation” (Marton &
Booth, 1997, p.108). Learning is considered to take place when students become aware of
the aspects of variation that they have not been able to discern previously.
Aimed at describing and explaining variation within learners’ conceptions or experiences,
Variation Theory usually leads to “an outcome space” that consists of a hierarchical set of
increasingly more sophisticated categories of conception or understanding. This structure,
together with its empirically driven nature, makes Variation Theory an appropriate choice
to guide the development of learning progressions. Most importantly, it points to a
systematic way of characterizing the different conceptions that students exhibit, namely,
to identify the critical aspects of variation that set their understanding apart from each
other.
Methodology
To understand students´conceptions of “size and scale”, we conducted a series of three
studies. As the focus of this paper is not on the studies themselves, but the use of Variation
Theory in interpreting the results, only essential details of the studies are provided here.
Further information can be found elsewhere (Light et al., 2007, 2008; Swarat et al., 2011).
Participants were undergraduate students enrolled in a first-year engineering course and
a non-major materials science course at a major Midwest university in the USA. Both
courses included units focused on nanoscience. The first study was more exploratory in
nature. It involved 12 students from diverse backgrounds in task-based, think-aloud
interviews. Students were asked to order a list of objects of widely varying sizes (football
field, elephant, typical science textbook, human hair, bacterium, virus, and atom) along a
line, and then to apply a numerical scale to represent their size differences. The second
study used a similar methodological approach, but the interview focus was narrowed.
Students (n=20) were given scale examples generated in the first round of interviews, and
asked to evaluate their appropriateness. The third study administered a set of assessment
items in the form of multiple choice and short answer to 111 students. These items were
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011