Development of senior high school students' modeling about air quality

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate how students develop modeling abilities after the scaffolded modeling curriculum and what characteristics of high performance students differ from those of low performance students in their modeling practices. The data included thirteen students’ (10 males and 3 females) pre and post modeling abilities test, and pre and post interviews. We designed and analyzed the interviews according to a coding scheme developed for an expert-novice study (Hsu et al., 2007). The results showed that students’ modeling abilities in designing a research to explore air quality have been improved, particularly in the reasoning process of anticipated conclusion and determine research variables of planning, and different performing students made a different improving pattern. The scaffolded modeling curriculums designed by the researchers shorten the gap between expert and novice in modeling air quality.