>=20
> Friday a week ago my colleague and friend Hugo Wikstr=F6m successfully
> defended his Phd thesis in the public ceremony that this is in Sweden. Th=
e
> title of his dissertation is (in official English translation, the book
> itself is in Swedish): *Understanding change. Model building, simulation
> and high school students' learning.*
Do you have a reference suitable for language-challenged North Americans?
Also, is Hugo on xmca?
>=20
> The following summary is mine, and thus possibly more speculative than Hu=
go
> would have made it:
>=20
> The observation of an urgent need for improved understandings of change h=
as
> been a driving force in Hugo's work for as long as I have known him (we
> were in the same batch of new doctoral students in the late eighties). Wi=
th
> his background experience as a mathematics teacher in secondary school th=
is
> observation made him turn to system dynamics as an alternative to the
> traditional curriculum where science students in secondary school are
> introduced to differential equations, mostly learning the procedures
> without gaining an understanding that could link productively to
> understandings of the world we live in. The modelling tool in Hugo's case
> has been Stella simulations.
>=20
> The centerpiece of the dissertation is a full-scale teaching experiment
> that Hugo had the opportunity to carry out with a group of 13 science
> students (17 yrs). For ten weeks this group devoted three math lesson
> periods a week to dynamic modelling of a number of problems (from economy
> and ecology), and the writing of reports on these problems. (As an aside:
> did anybody ever get the idea to have students write long reflective
> reports on their problem solving with differential equations?) There were
> before-and-after interviews carried out, and also a post-test involving a
> reference group with no Stella experience.
>=20
> To make a long story short: The students learned a lot about the
> time-dependent behaviour of systems under different initial conditions
> (etc.) At least some of them were also able to link this productively to
> the features of differential equations, while for students with no Stella
> experience differential equations seemed rather to form an obstacle to
> their understanding of processes of change. (This is a point where I may =
be
> misrepresenting. (EE))
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> One of Hugo's final questions for further research is how teaching method=
s
> using dynamic simulation could be taken down in the age groups -- he has
> done some developmental work with Stella in the last grades of primary
> school. With tools like those David mentions in his message I'm convinced
> that something sensible could be done with simulation in the early grades
> of primary schooling, too.
>=20
> Developing sensible artifacts (aka microworlds and simulation templates)
> and good tasks//problems for younger ages seems to me the minor problem.
> More important is the setting: I'm sure we could run very successful
> projects on modeling in early childhood education, but that doesn't
> necessarily mean that modeling becomes an integrated part of the practice=
s
> once the project is over and the researchers leave.
>=20
=09Thanks Eva for the beautiful summary of a very interesting project
and the interesting question. Jerry's idea is to have the kids could use
the software to make games that they and other kids could play. Some
ownership and creativity should prolong involvement. Still, I don't see
why the "researchers" have to "leave" completely. They do need to leave
artifacts and skills with teachers and then follow up with distant
support, when the teachers run into problems. Music is pretty well
integrated into my life, but I had years of being taught and I also keep
running into other musicians and people who want to hear music. xmca'ers
could probably give me a host of theory to support the notions that
mediation may take years and that even then, there needs to be a community
of users, makers, and experts to sustain a skill.
=09David