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Effects of interactive teacher-generated drawings on students’ understanding of plate tectonics

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Abstract

We investigate an interactive teacher-generated drawing strategy in which the teacher constructs a drawing with the help of the students. The students contribute their ideas on how to visualize to-be-drawn concepts, embedded in an interactive process. The present study explored whether learning from a scientific text on plate tectonics could be enhanced by an interactive teacher-generated drawing strategy. A number of studies on student-generated drawings have shown that students have difficulties to accurately represent scientific information (i.e. Van Meter & Garner, 2005). One solution to such difficulties—providing external illustrations for comparison—has not always been helpful (Fiorella & Zhang, 2018), because students need support on how to process the provided illustrations. Ninety-four 8th-grade students (M = 13.34, SD = 0.50) participated in the study. Instructions varied according to a 2 × 2 factorial between-subjects design with “student-generated drawings” (yes, no) and “interactive teacher-generated drawings” (yes, no) as the two factors. The following conditions were applied: reading a scientific text; reading and creating drawings; reading and engaging in the interactive drawing process; reading and creating drawings as well as engaging in the interactive drawing process. Subsequently, the students answered questions about their comprehension (transfer, recall, and drawing). The interactive teacher-generated drawing groups (interactive teacher-generated drawing group, student-and-interactive teacher-generated drawing group) showed better transfer, recall, and drawing performance than the non-interactive groups (no-strategy group, student-generated drawing group). No effects were found for student-generated drawings on the immediate posttests. However, interactive teacher-generated drawings and student-generated drawings enhanced drawing performance in the long term. Interactive teacher-generated drawing can be seen as an effective strategy for fostering mental model building to enhance learning and understanding of scientific text.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Teacher Education, University of Fribourg, Rue P.-A. de Faucigny 2, 1700, Fribourg, Switzerland

    Cristiana Lardi & Claudia Leopold

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  1. Cristiana Lardi
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  2. Claudia Leopold
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Correspondence to Claudia Leopold.

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Appendices

Appendix A

Example Paragraph from the Scientific Text on Plate Tectonics.

figure a

Appendix B

Each learning booklet included a practice learning sheet containing an example paragraph on lightning (adapted from Mayer, 2020) to introduce the students to the respective strategy condition (see Appendix B). This is a practice learning task for the main learning task (plate tectonics).

figure b

Appendix C

Scoring categories for the transfer question “Even though there are convective currents in the mantle of the entire Earth, volcanoes do not appear everywhere on the Earth. Why don’t volcanoes occur everywhere? Please list possible reasons.”

  1. A

    Place

    1. A1

      Volcanoes arise at plate boundaries.

    2. A2

      …because there magma finds a faster or easier way to the eruption.

    3. A3

      When the plates move away…

    4. A4

      …the resulting split

    5. A5

      …is filled with magma.

    6. A6

      Volcanoes are (more likely) formed on the ocean floor

    7. A7

      …at subduction zones (one plate moves below another)

  2. B

    Subduction: collision of two oceanic plates or a continental plate with an oceanic plate

    1. B1

      During subduction, volcanoes are formed if ... 

    2. B2

      …the plutons (magma chamber) have enough pressure inside or are full.

    3. B3

      …the magma rises towards the Earth's crust (magma chamber)

    4. B4

      …and not only mixes in the coat.

    5. B5

      …the oceanic plate goes down sufficiently

    6. B6

      …to depths where there is high temperature or pressure

    7. B7

      … so that the surrounding rock can melt.

    8. B8

      The core is the warmest part of the Earth or magma rises in the mantle because it is so warm in the Earth's interior.

  3. C

    Other causes: No subduction or plates do not  move apart

    1. C1

      Sliding of the adjacent plates

    2. C2

      Collision of two continental plates

    3. C3

      … mountains are created (or the mountains have mirrored roots in their mantle)

    4. C4

      The continental plates are too thick.

    5. C5

      No subduction (- no volcanoes)

    6. C6

      No move away of the plates

    7. C7

      Direction of convective currents

    8. C8

      Strength of convective currents

      (Maximum 23 points)

      No points:-Weather (cold and warm)

      • The water has more pressure than the air

      • Erosion of water

Appendix D

Scoring categories for the drawing task “Draw how two continental plates crash against each other. Please include the convective currents in your drawings”.

figure c

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Lardi, C., Leopold, C. Effects of interactive teacher-generated drawings on students’ understanding of plate tectonics. Instr Sci 50, 273–302 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-021-09567-0

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