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.
1. Findings Despite the popular notion that today’s high school students are highly "visual", research shows that students actually have trouble making sense of diagrams in their science textbooks and learning from them. We developed and tested several methods to teach students how to better understand the diagrams, photos, and other visual representations in their textbooks: 1) Conventions of diagrams: We taught students conventions they often don’t know, such as: what do arrows stand for? how do you use color keys? 2) Coordinating text and diagrams: We taught students when and how to go back and forth between sentences and diagrams in order to learn the most from the diagrams 3) Self-explanation: We prompted student learning from a diagram to explain to themselves how things work, and why they work the way they do 4) Student-constructed diagrams: We gave students a partial diagram, and asked them to write in (or draw in) the missing parts (writing and drawing were compared). Method. We created customized workbooks for each school that students completed individually or in pairs, followed by teacher-led discussion. Workbooks were used for 4-6 weeks each in experiments at 2 schools involving 13 biology and chemistry teachers and 632 students. Eight of these experiments were in biology classrooms and 1 was in chemistry; 8 experiments used workbooks and 1 used a brief 1/2 page warm-up format with no discussion. Results. Diagram comprehension. The biggest increases in diagram comprehension (all larger than expected by chance) were found for Conventions of diagrams (in chemistry) and Student-constructed verbal diagrams. The next largest increases were for Coordinating text and diagrams and Student-constructed diagrams in biology, and the smallest increases were for Self-explanation. Geology Diagram comprehension. We also tested whether learning about diagrams in a student’s current subject could transfer to better understanding of diagrams in other subjects (we used geology). Transfer was greatest for Conventions of diagrams using restudy. The next largest were for Conventions of diagrams and Self-explanation in biology. The smallest gains were for Coordinating text and diagrams. In sum, there is promising evidence that we can effectively and efficiently teach students how to better understand the critical scientific information in their science textbooks. We have created 5 effective teaching methods that high school biology and chemistry teachers could use in classrooms today. These methods could be adapted for other subjects and ages (e.g., undergraduate biology), and have already been successfully implemented using laptop-based electronic workbooks in middle school science classes on another project. Four Ph.D. students were trained during the project; one will be a professor of educational psychology at Old Dominion University beginning January 2014, one works in industry as a psychologist (her dissertation used data from the study), one will graduate with a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology in December 2013 and one in May 2014. Of the undergraduate students who worked on the project and who have graduated, two are doctoral students—one in Human Development and one in Physics—and one is a Master’s student in Public Health. 2. Other products Other products include workbooks and teacher training materials from interventions, measures of science knowledge and diagram comprehension, and guides for scoring the answers that students write in workbooks and warm-up sheets. 3. Additional Information Two articles have been published from the results: Cromley, J. G., Perez, A. C, Fitzhugh, S., Newcombe, N., Wills, T. W., & Tanaka, J. C. (2013). Improving students’ diagrammatic reasoning: A classroom intervention study Journal of Experimental Education, 81(4), 511-537. doi: 10.1080/00220973.2012.745465 Cromley, J. G., Bergey, B. W., Fitzhugh, S. L., Newcombe, N., Wills, T. W., Shipley T. F., & Tanaka, J. C. (2013). Effectiveness of student-constructed diagrams and self-explanation instruction. Learning and Instruction, 26(1), 45-58. doi: 10.1016/j.learninstruc.2013.01.003 In addition to the two published studies, results from 1 school on the Biology warmup study have been submitted to a journal and we are waiting to receive feedback from reviewers. Results from 2 schools comparing Conventions of diagrams to Coordinating text and diagrams (both using biology workbooks) have been submitted to a journal and we are waiting to receive feedback from reviewers.
