Learning to understand the tree of life

Shaaron Ainsworth, Camillia Matuk, David Uttal, Karl Rosengren

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

Abstract

Tree-thinking is increasingly recognized as a crucial skill in the biological sciences. However, for students, the task is wrought with challenges. Even as representations are meant to facilitate reasoning about difficult concepts such as macroevolution and the phylogenetic relationships among taxa existing tree diagrams that are so crucial to the biologist's profession present many challenges that hinder students' understanding The presenters in this symposium take multiple theoretical and methodological lenses to examine the many-faceted challenges of tree-thinking with representations 8 from the issues of representation and symbolization, to the cognitive and developmental issues of reasoning, to the implementation of a classroom intervention. Brought together in this symposium, the researchers initiate an ongoing agenda to understand and to design intervention that will support students reasoning with this important representational tool.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages219-226
Number of pages8
StatePublished - 2010
Event9th International Conference of the Learning Sciences, ICLS 2010 - Chicago, IL, United States
Duration: Jun 29 2010Jul 2 2010

Other

Other9th International Conference of the Learning Sciences, ICLS 2010
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityChicago, IL
Period6/29/107/2/10

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Science (miscellaneous)
  • Education

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