Exploring the development of conceptual ecologies: Communities of conceptsrelated to convection and heat

In this study of fifth-grade: students, we examined the relationships and d evelopment of communities of concepts related to heat and convection. The s tudy involved five classes of fifth-grade students who worked with a partne r for a series of heat and convection laboratory investigations. Students' knowledge was assessed before and after instruction through the use of a wr itten test, concept maps, card sort tasks, and interviews. During instructi on each dyad was audiorecorded and observed by a field researcher. The patt erns and connections among students' conceptual ecologies related to heat a nd convection as well as the types of schemas that were accessed preceding and subsequent to instruction are described. The types of knowledge elicite d by each type of assessment are identified. Findings include the influence of familial and cultural experiences (such as airplanes, weather patterns, and religious beliefs) on conceptual development, as well as the extent to which competing phenomena (evaporation and dissolving) have on the develop ment of new conceptual understandings. The study also found that each asses sment measure elicited different types of knowledge. Concept maps were effe ctive in describing students' existing schemes related to heat prior to ins truction. Multidimensional scaling and the card sorting task provided infor mation on students' conceptual organization for clusters of concepts. The i nterviews and dyad discourse transcripts were most effective in revealing t he processes and prior knowledge that students used as they interpreted new observations in light of preexisting experiences. (C) 2000 John Wiley & So ns.