Scientific Understandings Revealed by Students’ Computer Models of a Stream: A Trickle or a Flood?

Analysis of student constructed computer models is important in order to determine their overall educational value, identify general misconceptions or gaps in both conceptual and epistemological understandings at the classroom level, and assess students’ individual achievement levels. This study examines a set of such models constructed during a high school investigation of a local creek. Affordances for the demonstration of conceptual, epistemological and strategic understandings were identified before searching for these understandings in the models. The computer models as a set represent a substantial portion (70%) of the scientific content in the creek project. Ecological content was most strongly represented in the models and most students were able to model causal linkages between biology, earth science, physical science and/or environmental science phenomena. The models potentially represent a much smaller proportion of the epistemological and strategic content of the project. However, these understandings were more tightly scaffolded by the task, so most of the models showed evidence of these types of understandings. Analysis of the content in the models provides evidence of the veracity of students’ understandings. Students demonstrated more understandings around specific content than they did about the strategic or epistemological understandings of modeling.