Constructing Science

Constructing Science
Author: Deena Skolnick Weisberg
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2022-09-20
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 026237062X

An examination of children’s causal reasoning capacities and how those capacities serve as the foundation of their scientific thinking. Young children have remarkable capacities for causal reasoning, which are part of the foundation of their scientific thinking abilities. In Constructing Science, Deena Weisberg and David Sobel trace the ways that young children’s sophisticated causal reasoning abilities combine with other cognitive, metacognitive, and social factors to develop into a more mature set of scientific thinking abilities. Conceptualizing scientific thinking as the suite of skills that allows people to generate hypotheses, solve problems, and explain aspects of the world, Weisberg and Sobel argue that understanding how this capacity develops can offer insights into how we can become a more scientifically literate society. Investigating the development of causal reasoning and how it sets the stage for scientific thinking in the elementary school years and beyond, Weisberg and Sobel outline a framework for understanding how children represent and learn causal knowledge and identify key variables that differ between causal reasoning and scientific thinking. They present empirical studies suggesting ways to bridge the gap between causal reasoning and scientific thinking, focusing on two factors: contextualization and metacognitive thinking abilities. Finally, they examine children’s explicit understanding of such concepts as science, learning, play, and teaching.

Essential Building Science

Essential Building Science
Author: Jacob Deva Racusin
Publisher: New Society Publishers
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2016-11-28
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1550926292

Down and dirty – a complete step-by-step guide to making, installing and living with beautiful, all-natural earthen floors Poor heat and moisture management are the enemies of durable, comfortable, and efficient housing, and good building design and construction starts with a solid understanding of good building science. Essential Building Science provides a highly visual and accessible introduction to the fundamentals of building science for residential construction. Part one covers the rationale behind high-performance design and the fundamentals of building physics, including thermal dynamics, moisture transfer, and hygro-thermal dynamics such as vapor drive and condensation. Part two teaches the vital critical thinking skills needed to consider buildings as whole systems and to develop thermal and moisture control strategies regardless of the specifics of the design. Case studies and examples from across North American climatic zones illuminate real-life problems and offer builders, designers, and DIYers the insights and tools required for creating better new buildings and dramatically improving old ones. Good science plus critical thinking equals high performance buildings.

Creating Scientific Concepts

Creating Scientific Concepts
Author: Nancy J Nersessian
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2010-08-13
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0262293455

An account that analyzes the dynamic reasoning processes implicated in a fundamental problem of creativity in science: how does genuine novelty emerge from existing representations? How do novel scientific concepts arise? In Creating Scientific Concepts, Nancy Nersessian seeks to answer this central but virtually unasked question in the problem of conceptual change. She argues that the popular image of novel concepts and profound insight bursting forth in a blinding flash of inspiration is mistaken. Instead, novel concepts are shown to arise out of the interplay of three factors: an attempt to solve specific problems; the use of conceptual, analytical, and material resources provided by the cognitive-social-cultural context of the problem; and dynamic processes of reasoning that extend ordinary cognition. Focusing on the third factor, Nersessian draws on cognitive science research and historical accounts of scientific practices to show how scientific and ordinary cognition lie on a continuum, and how problem-solving practices in one illuminate practices in the other. Her investigations of scientific practices show conceptual change as deriving from the use of analogies, imagistic representations, and thought experiments, integrated with experimental investigations and mathematical analyses. She presents a view of constructed models as hybrid objects, serving as intermediaries between targets and analogical sources in bootstrapping processes. Extending these results, she argues that these complex cognitive operations and structures are not mere aids to discovery, but that together they constitute a powerful form of reasoning—model-based reasoning—that generates novelty. This new approach to mental modeling and analogy, together with Nersessian's cognitive-historical approach, make Creating Scientific Concepts equally valuable to cognitive science and philosophy of science.

Constructing Representations to Learn in Science

Constructing Representations to Learn in Science
Author: Russell Tytler
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2013-04-20
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9462092036

Constructing Representations to Learn in Science Current research into student learning in science has shifted attention from the traditional cognitivist perspectives of conceptual change to socio-cultural and semiotic perspectives that characterize learning in terms of induction into disciplinary literacy practices. This book builds on recent interest in the role of representations in learning to argue for a pedagogical practice based on students actively generating and exploring representations. The book describes a sustained inquiry in which the authors worked with primary and secondary teachers of science, on key topics identified as problematic in the research literature. Data from classroom video, teacher interviews and student artifacts were used to develop and validate a set of pedagogical principles and explore student learning and teacher change issues. The authors argue the theoretical and practical case for a representational focus. The pedagogical approach is illustrated and explored in terms of the role of representation to support quality student learning in science. Separate chapters address the implications of this perspective and practice for structuring sequences around different concepts, reasoning and inquiry in science, models and model based reasoning, the nature of concepts and learning, teacher change, and assessment. The authors argue that this representational focus leads to significantly enhanced student learning, and has the effect of offering new and productive perspectives and approaches for a number of contemporary strands of thinking in science education including conceptual change, inquiry, scientific literacy, and a focus on the epistemic nature of science.

What's Your Evidence?

What's Your Evidence?
Author: Carla Zembal-Saul
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2013
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780132117265

With the view that children are capable young scientists, authors encourage science teaching in ways that nurture students' curiosity about how the natural world works including research-based approaches to support all K-5 children constructing scientific explanations via talk and writing. Grounded in NSF-funded research, this book/DVD provides K-5 teachers with a framework for explanation (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) that they can use to organize everything from planning to instructional strategies and from scaffolds to assessment. Because the framework addresses not only having students learn scientific explanations but also construct them from evidence and evaluate them, it is considered to build upon the new NRC framework for K-12 science education, the national standards, and reform documents in science education, as well as national standards in literacy around argumentation and persuasion, including the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010).The chapters guide teachers step by step through presenting the framework for students, identifying opportunities to incorporate scientific explanation into lessons, providing curricular scaffolds (that fade over time) to support all students including ELLs and students with special needs, developing scientific explanation assessment tasks, and using the information from assessment tasks to inform instruction.

Materials Science In Construction: An Introduction

Materials Science In Construction: An Introduction
Author: Arshad Ahmed
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 654
Release: 2014-11-20
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1135138400

Materials Science in Construction explains the science behind the properties and behaviour of construction's most fundamental materials (metals, cement and concrete, polymers, timber, bricks and blocks, glass and plaster). In particular, the critical factors affecting in situ materials are examined, such as deterioration and the behaviour and durability of materials under performance. An accessible, easy-to-follow approach makes this book ideal for all diploma and undergraduate students on construction-related courses taking a module in construction materials.

Building Science

Building Science
Author: Jens Pohl
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2011-02-21
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0470655739

With the improved efficiency of heating, cooling and lighting in buildings crucial to the low carbon targets of all current governments, Building Science: Concepts and Applications provides a timely and much-needed addition to the existing literature on architectural and environmental design education. Taking a logical and didactic approach, the author introduces the reader to the underlying concepts and principles of the thermal, lighting, and acoustic determinants of building design in four integrated sections. The first section explores the thermal building environment and the principles of thermal comfort, translating these principles into conceptual building design solutions. The author examines the heat flow characteristics of the building envelope and explains steady state design methods that form the basis of most building codes. He discusses the sun as a natural heat source and describes the principles of active and passive solar building design solutions. The second section introduces the scientific principles of light, color, and vision, stressing the importance of daylight in building design, presenting the Daylight Factor design concept and methodology, and discussing glare conditions and their avoidance. It also addresses artificial lighting, delving into the prominent role that electricity plays in the production of light by artificial means and comparing the efficacy and characteristics of the various commercially available light sources in terms of the energy to light conversion ratio, life span, available intensity range, color rendition properties, and cost. The third section deals with the various aspects of sound that impact the design of the built environment, discussing the nature of sound as a physical force that sets any medium through which it travels into vibration and laying the foundations for the treatment of sound as an important means of communication as well as a disruptive disturbance. The final section discusses the foundational concepts of ecological design as a basis for addressing sustainability issues in building design solutions. These issues include the embedded energy of construction materials, waste management, preservation of freshwater and management of graywater, adoption of passive solar principles, energy saving measures applicable to mechanical building services, and the end-of-lifecycle deconstruction and recycling of building materials and components. Covers the fundamental building science topics of heat, energy, light and sound Takes a logical and didactic approach, tracing the historical roots of building science Includes summaries of new technologies in solar energy and photovoltaic systems Features a section on the principles of sustainable architecture Website with answers to MC questions testing students' learning

Construction Science and Materials

Construction Science and Materials
Author: Surinder Singh Virdi
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2017-01-09
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 1119245109

Construction Science & Materials is designed to cover topics studied at levels 2 – 5 on Construction HND courses and is also suitable for first year undergraduates on construction courses as well as Building surveying, Architectural Technology and Quantity Surveying. It is an essential text for those who have done no science since their GCSEs. Divided into 17 chapters, each with written explanations supplemented by solved examples and relevant diagrams to substantiate the text. Chapters end with numerical questions covering a range of problems and their answers are given at the end of the book and on the book’s website.

Progressing Science Education

Progressing Science Education
Author: Keith S. Taber
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 413
Release: 2009-05-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 904812431X

Exploring one of the central themes in science education theory, this volume examines how science education can be considered as a scientific activity within a broad post-positivist notion of science. Many students find learning science extremely problematic, whatever level of education they have reached. At the end of the 1970s a new approach to tackling learning difficulties in science was developed, drawing on ideas from psychology and cognitive science, and centred on the way students build up new knowledge in reference to their existing ideas. ‘Constructivism’ became the dominant paradigm in science education research for two decades, spawning a vast body of literature reporting aspects of learners’ ideas in different science topics. However, Constructivism came under fire as it was recognised that the research did not offer immediate and simple prescriptions for effective science teaching. The whole approach was widely criticised, in particular by those who saw it as having ‘anti-science’ leanings. In this book, the notion of scientific research programmes is used to understand the development, limitations and potential of constructivism. It is shown that constructivist work in science education fits into a coherent programme exploring the contingencies of learning science. The author goes further to address criticisms of constructivism; evaluate progress in the field; and suggest directions for future research. It is concluded that constructivism has provided the foundations for a progressive research programme that continues to guide enquiry into learning and teaching science.