Teaching Effective Use of Diagrammatic Reasoning in Biology

Temple University, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

The investigators propose to develop and test new instructional techniques aimed at teaching high-school science students how to use the diagrams that appear in their biology textbooks. Research from a range of disciplines has shown that people have difficulty making sense of diagrams. The investigators had previously found that inference and other high-level processes that are important for learning from text are even more important for learning from diagrams. They further showed that students show little gains in content understanding from textbook diagrams. The investigators will capitalize on commonalities among several theories of diagrammatic reasoning to develop four interventions, following an additive design, aimed at improving classroom instruction in how to use diagrams. In each iteration, one additional intervention feature is added to the initial intervention. In the first intervention, they will teach the components of diagrams (i.e., how to read captions, color keys, and other conventions of diagrams). In the second, they will also teach the coordinating of text and diagrams. In the third, they will also have the students engage in self-explanation. In the fourth, they will also have students construct their own drawings. In conjunction with these experimental studies, the investigators will collect eye tracking data on a subset of participants pre- and post-intervention in order to look for possible changes in gaze patterns.