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How Different Variants Of Orbit Diagrams Influence Students' Explanations Of The Seasons, Victor R. Lee
How Different Variants Of Orbit Diagrams Influence Students' Explanations Of The Seasons, Victor R. Lee
Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications
The cause of the seasons is often associated with a very particular alternative conception: that the Earth’s orbit around the sun is highly elongated and the differences in distance result in variations in temperature. It has been suggested that the standard diagrams used to depict the Earth’s orbit may be in some way responsible for the initial appearance and overall maintenance of this incorrect conceptualization; the elongated shape of the orbit is thought of as a conceptualization cue that invites a fairly predictable way of reasoning. To test if that is indeed the case, six variants of diagrams depicting differently …
Misconstruals Or More? The Interactions Of Orbit Diagrams And Explanations Of The Seasons, Victor R. Lee
Misconstruals Or More? The Interactions Of Orbit Diagrams And Explanations Of The Seasons, Victor R. Lee
Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences Faculty Publications
This paper examines a “misconstrual hypothesis” regarding diagrams of the Earth’s orbit around the sun and how middle school students explain the cause of the seasons. Drawing from 24 semi-structured interviews, I present qualitative analyses of students’ explanations of why temperatures vary in summer and winter and how those are influenced by the elliptical shape of perspective drawings of the Earth’s orbit, common to many science textbooks. The results of the analysis suggest that diagram interpretation does not necessarily follow what has been often predicted in the literature and that conceptualizations can shift quite rapidly as different diagram features are …