Boer, Niek (2021) What strategies do high and low achieving students use when reading a biological process diagram? Research Project, Science Education and Communication.
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Abstract
In biology education in the Netherlands, students are often confronted with visual representations of biological concepts. These visualizations are intended to make complex concepts easier to understand for students and to summarize a lot of information in a compact figure. However, such figures are not always well understood by students. This study investigated which strategies students use when studying two process diagrams: the menstrual cycle and the nitrogen cycle. Students were asked to look at visual representations of each of these process diagrams for 5 minutes and then use the think-aloud method to explain what they saw in the figures. These interviews were subsequently transcribed and analyzed with the use of an adapted version of the coding scheme established by Kragten et al. (2015). A total of eleven different strategies have been identified. The results show that students mainly read labels regarding the organizational level and give meaning to process arrows. From the quality of the answers given, it can be concluded that students generally describe a figure very superficially and often do not really understand what the process diagram is about. There is no notable difference between havo and vwo students and high-performing students and low-performing students. Vwo students, however, are in general better able to explain what the proces diagrams were about, and they made use of prior knowledge more often.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Research Project) |
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| Supervisor name: | Mali, A. |
| Degree programme: | Science Education and Communication |
| Thesis type: | Research Project |
| Language: | English |
| Date Deposited: | 31 Aug 2021 14:11 |
| Last Modified: | 31 Aug 2021 14:11 |
| URI: | https://fse.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/25939 |
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