Abstract
The chapter discusses the challenges and opportunities of initiating elementary school children into the practice of scientific modeling. Understanding modeling depends on conceiving science as a process of knowledge construction and critique and of pragmatic engagement with material and conditions that enable and mediate scientific ways of knowing. Our 25 years of research with children indicates the necessity of inviting students to invent models to address questions they care about, test their models in contexts that provide feedback about model fit and provoke model revision, and participate in a community engaged in building knowledge together. An accessible entrée to modeling is through developing representational competence. As students begin to appreciate the purposes and trade-offs of various representational conventions, they also begin to address more sophisticated questions about model fit, including whether and how a particular model can be accepted as a valid representation of a target phenomenon.
This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant no. DRL-1316312.
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Lehrer, R., Schauble, L. (2019). Learning to Play the Modeling Game. In: Upmeier zu Belzen, A., Krüger, D., van Driel, J. (eds) Towards a Competence-Based View on Models and Modeling in Science Education. Models and Modeling in Science Education, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30255-9_13
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