Usin `think Aloud` To See Which We Sources Students Draw Upon When Learning With Diagrams

Using ‘think aloud’ to observe how pupils approach learning and considering what resources do they draw on in the learning process?

Task background

I approached my year 8 class - set 2 (of 2 sets) in lesson time for two volunteers to help me one lunch time. I asked if any pupils might like to assist me with some research as part of my own learning as a science teacher. There was no shortage of volunteers. The pupils have started to comment that they have started to feel they are enjoying science and are more confident after the few weeks with me as their new science teacher. I cannot help thinking their own curiosity about the nature of the task was the reasons for lots of raised hands wthen I asked for help. We arranged a suitable lunch time to meet in one of the laboratories to conduct the task.

I had picked a diagram which was relevant for the students at the time they were about to begin a new unit which would be developing their previous ideas on the particle model. The new concepts to be taught would introduce ideas about atoms, molecules, elements, compounds and mixtures. Their participating in the task would provide me with an insight in to their approach to diagrams before starting to teach the new unit. It would also serve the pupils well to revisit some of the ideas they have previously been taught.

Figure 1 - this is the diagram presented to the two pupils for the task (image hyperlink)

The diagram was printed in colour, using laser printer and was covered until I had explained what I would like them to do, and sought their consent for participating in the task.

The research methodology would be to asking them to share (`think aloud`) their initial ideas about the diagram and what they noticed. If I was not sure as to what they were saying, I would also enquire and seek clarification on any thoughts. I would also provide re-assurance should they need clarification on any part of the task.

Being a comparatively new member of the science team at this school, rather than record the children attempting the task, which would require seeking parental consent and adding another potential distraction during the task, simple notes were taken during the conversation for aiding reflections and reading later on. My aim was to focus on how they see the task and what they brought to it and then fill in the notes immediately after the pupils had left the room. There was plenty of time for this after they had left.

The pupils` existing understandings and their approach to the task

The two students were both girls, and were interested to hear that some teachers are interested in learning about how to teach better. It would appear from the way the pupils were asking questions about why any teacher might go back to University and study something new gave the impression that the children think all teachers were born with a natural gift of understanding their subject and teaching as a skill.

Initially, the girls approached the task as if it were a test. They took a few moments to look at the diagram, and immediately started to take it in turns to say what they knew about the states of matter. This dialogue made note-taking easy as the points were clear and concise statements about what they believed were truths about these models.

As time progressed, their gaze would not move up from the page very often. They would look around the page at first, and then at an area on the page, think carefully about something and then make a comment. As their ideas were presented less often as the task went on, one pupil might speak over the other. One girl might also look at the other girl to see what she was looking at. This sometimes led to both saying something very similar and talking over each other. Sometimes one of the pair would notice something on the diagram that the other did not, such as the container with the gas had a lid on it.

The other girl, who had not noticed the lid on the container would comment that they had not noticed it and look disparaged as if they were in trouble for getting something wrong. I noted the phrase ‘I didn’t even notice that’.

I re-assured the girls this activity was not a test and that I only wanted to see ‘what did they notice’. Although trying to make my observations un-obtrusive as possible so not to influence the girls, I thought this a necessary interjection.

After reciting many facts about the states of matter, one of the girls started to criticise the diagram. Explaining they saw limitations in accuracy of what the diagram was trying to represent. For example, she commended that the particles were shiny, and they did not look like they were not ‘real’ particles. I asked them why they thought the particles were not ‘real’ and they said the particles they had been shown before in another book did not look the same as these ones. They were shiny, and were blue. Water was drawn as blue in the book they had been using previously, and she did not think this was water. I asked her what she did think it was, and she was not sure.

They also jointly criticised the diagram for not showing any ‘movement’ as they explained that particles in liquids and gases had more movement and this diagram showed ‘they’re not moving’. From this, they demonstrated they felt they had a confident understanding that movements of particles were an important feature in states of matter.

The other girl, who until now, had concurred with the criticisms although offered none herself, started to count the particles in each container. She was the girl who noted the lid, and then, after noting the number of particles, read the words under each picture. Neither of the pupils mentioned the arrows under each container. After a while, both girls were struggling to notice anything further and said they had noticed all they could. The girls were thanked the girls for their time and dismissed back to their lunch break.

Overall, we were together for about fifteen minutes. During this time, the girls demonstrated they remembered much about their previous teaching:

The pupils knew about the idea particles were arranged regularly and close together

Particles in different states had different movement

They had ideas of what ‘real’ particles ‘should’ look like and the diagram was not representative of these

Liquids and gases assumed the shape of the container

That solids were of fixed volume

Gases were not of fixed volume

Analysis of the findings and how they relate to the literature

Textbooks, interactive whiteboard resources, worksheets and even my own use of the whiteboard regularly make uses of diagrams in science lessons. Scientific diagrams have uses in modelling, as a method to understand the concepts taught by science teachers in schools. In fact, modelling as a method to understand the idea of matter and the world around us go back as far as almost 2500 years ago with the Greek philosophers Democritus (B.C. 460) and Leucippus (Harrison and Treagust, 1996). There is clearly a special place for diagrams in the sciences.

A diagram, like modelling ‘needs to draw on the need to explain something, the target and something that is already known about, the source’ (Oversby, 2012). The girls demonstrated that the diagram can be a useful way to give memorised statements on what is required to be reproduced by memory when called upon to do so in a test. They can recall ‘facts’ about the diagram from their lessons last year, and could explain what property the particles are inferring to – such as volume, shape and arrangement from the diagram.

The pupils applied their background understanding to the diagram presented to them. They were able to apply their understanding to the model printed on the page, and, at the same time, were keen to spot non-correspondences with diagrams they had been shown in the past. The diagram, previously unseen by the girls, was effective enough to ‘coax out’ the girl’s understanding. Albeit, with some degree of uneasiness which was voiced by the participants. Oversby (1996), to some degree, explains this observation made during the activity

‘[R]esearchers in modelling often stress the importance of noticing points of correspondence and of non-correspondence in the explanatory process to avoid misunderstandings. While it may well by true that models only exist for the process of modelling in explanations, this point seems to be rarely mentioned by authors.’

It may well be true that a diagram is a method to explain for example the macroscopic properties of matter to the sub-microscopic features by using particles, yet a problem for the girls looking at the diagram was that they were finding inconsistencies with the diagram being shown at the time, and the diagrams they had been presented with in the past, rather than using it as a tool for communicating a way of understanding. This is something I would never have considered myself when presenting a diagram to a class until now.

The skill a student can demonstrate when using diagrams could have significant impact on the outcomes of any assessment. For example, how the girls approached a task involving a diagram could have a direct impact on their scores for an end of unit summative assessments. Regarding the use of diagrams Black (1998) notes that: ‘Since the teacher has to foresee and appraise the opportunity that the task offers for the pupils to deploy and/or develop the knowledge and skills which are the target of the assessment’. In light of the students’ commentaries, they could use their own experiences to reproduce a significant amount of learning from using a diagram which did not exactly fulfil their expectations.

Using the responses from the girls, and their ability to adapt to apply their understanding to a new diagram on an already familiar topic, it may be possible that a diagram may give a teacher (or examiner) the ability to provide the student under assessment with guidance on what they would like to answer in more open-ended assessment questions.

Black (1998), goes on to propose an issue with more open-ended assessment tasks: ‘In the case of open tasks particularly, the intentions may be frustrated if the pupil`s choice is guided by ignorance of, or deliberate avoidance of, some of the key concepts and skills which the task was designed to evoke.’ Using diagrams on topics that a student should be familiar with, in order to provide the context for a question, but preventing them from avoiding or deliberately omitting areas either deliberately through lack of knowledge, or ignorance by referring to the phenomena directed by the diagram is a way to compensate for a shortcoming of open-ended assessment as described by Black (1998).

Diagrams appear to have many uses such as clarification of the text, shorthand for a process, visualisation and to show equipment. There is no doubt that diagrams will feature heavily in the future. Pupils will be exposed to a variety of diagrams for the rest of their time in school.

Implications of the findings

The meeting with the girls as part of this task has stimulated an interest in thinking about how to better understand how to use diagrams in class. As well as drawing cartoons and diagrams and projecting images on the board from a digital projector, or even using purchased interactive resources such as the ‘Boardworks’ resources, the students receiving the diagram are clearly adding their own interpretations to that model.

This means the diagram they are presented with can help them understand or visualise the idea, equipment or process being communicated, but they also pay close attention to the details of the diagram. Any diagram is representing a simplified way of looking at a topic, process or idea.

In view of the experience gained through reading around the task matter, and the interaction with the two girls, a major personal reflection is that as a teacher, I should make an extra effort to emphasise what limitations there are of the model as well the correspondences of a diagram. This might build a deeper appreciation of the use of diagrams as a method of communicating understanding, as well as building in resilience to diagrams which vary from the ones presented for the first time. Often, there is ‘no right way’ for drawing a diagram, although, there may be regularities. Giving the pupils an understanding of the application, rather than the details of the diagram may aid their learning.

A diagram should be open for a pupil to scrutinise what is the creator trying to represent from the ‘real life’ scenario and they might also be able to appreciate what is deliberately (or not!) being omitted. Correspondences are often emphasised when I am teaching with a diagram, but the non-correspondences until now, have seldom been given thought. I will add scrutiny to my teaching and observe the impact. Questions such as: Which parts of the diagram are relevant and how do they help us to explain the phenomenon being presented? What limitations are there of this diagram? Do these limitations matter? These questions may be a good starting point for planning lessons which use diagrams.

With the invention of the iPad and my ability to use it for photographing and videoing results and equipment in lessons, in real time, sharing the outcomes in a lesson, or even emailing the photos or videos around to each other gives an additional dimension to this reflection.

To what extent should a diagram be used, when a video could be used as an alternative? When should a video or photo be used in place of a diagram, and vice-versa? Might there be less misunderstanding by a pupil if the whole video, or a photograph is presented to them? Or, alternatively, would that video present too much additional information when only one or two salient points trying to be communicated to the learner?

I think there is a scope for considering the impact from the learning from this task for my planning. When picking resources from books, ICT or even drawing them myself, I will give more consideration to what should be included in the diagram, how it will be looked at and what parts I would like to be remembered by the pupils and so how is it best presented in order to communicate the idea but also give appreciation for the limitations and consistencies explained therein.

A reflection on the methods used to explore the pupils` understandings

There seems to be relatively little written about diagrams in science teaching and learning, so this is a suitable topic for further exploration, should the opportunity arise.

Being a new teacher to a high status school, and, as is true when working in any new school where trusting relationships are so important to build between teacher and pupil, as well as teacher and peers, it was inappropriate so early on to record the responses of the children being interviewed for the task. The implication for the amount of data that could be captured was therefore somewhat self-limiting. Possible additional observations which could have been made by listening to the commentary again from a recording device for example, might have added a degree of richness to the data that might have been collected.

It should be mentioned however, that developing these ideas of collecting data would mean increasing the amount of data to analyse. There are issues with this. Some research in to social science have illustrated that there are methodological issues in the study of collaborative learning. With the increase in data collected, a commonly accepted method is to create a tally of phrases with a focus on specific observations, which, such as the study of development of languages described by Burman (2004) exemplifies, if we are looking to see how a diagram may build on learning and further understanding, then, in the same way that if one was to focus entirely in on acquisition of language skills and not to think about the context in which they are applied, means you end up with ‘[R]estricted analysis of the role of language emerges from these accounts. and (...) Seen in this way, the significance of languages is limited and static.’

As a parallel to collecting a lot of data, but analysing it with too much of a narrow focus by limiting analysis to a few phrases in analysing diagrams, then is there a risk, as discovered by researchers in language development, that the researcher could be divorcing the data analysed and collated from the context of its use in interpreting.

The sampling size was small deliberately so, as time and the sampling size are a precious resource. Not just for the teacher-researcher, but the children themselves who would otherwise have to surrender their time to participate. There is no easy way to make such a piece of research less intrusive using this method. The amount of time each interview and analysis would consume would also not be summative. The picture built up by the researcher through multiple interactions would become more complex as more is gleaned through meeting with more children.

The activity or this task was carried out working in a pair. This is an excellent way to make sure the girls were relaxed and felt less pressure to participate. I am sure they found the experience amusing after they were absolutely sure the activity was not a ‘test’. The analysis shows up that the girls were undoubtedly taking ideas and prompts from each other. I am not sure a student on their own notice quite so much. Also, would they possibly go down both routes of scrutinising the diagram on one hand, and counting the particle and noticing the colours if they were not together? Black (1998), again, alludes to this issue in talking about group work: ‘Where the group work is simply a means, the task is to disentangle the achievement of individuals from the group process’.

The method of watching students and taking notes is limited, and with the equipment and ICT available, I am confident that a development on this task’s methodology could be developed to capture where students look, and even for how long and in what order. Alternatively, taking a greater number of pairs of students to see if they have alternative approaches, or knowledge could also develop the task further.

I might also choose to demonstrating the method with a ‘practice’ diagram to give the students an idea of what the researcher might be expecting, and surveying and observing other teachers to see what do science teachers and learners think diagrams are for in science? All these possible approaches offer exciting insights in to developments which might stem from this particular task. Since there are many ways to analyse the results of the task, it would make it a very suitable collaborative project.

References:

Black, P. (1998) Testing - friend or foe?, London: Falmer Press Chapter 6: How to assess - methods and instruments.

Burman, E (2004) Language Talk. In: RoutledgeFalmer. Psychology of Education, London, p52

Harrison, A and Treagust, D. (1996). Secondary Students` Mental Models of Atoms and Molecules: Implications for Teaching Chemistry. Science education. 80 (5), p509-34.

Oversby, J. (2012). Modelling as part of a scientific investigation. In: The Association for Science Education, ASE Guide to Research in Science Education. Hatfield, Herts: ASE. p117-124.