Students' Learning Approaches and Their Understanding of Some Chemical Concepts in Eighth-Grade Science

Analysis of the target students' discourse and actions during the group activities and their interview responses revealed differences between the deep and surface learning approaches regarding generative thinking, nature of explanations, asking questions, metacognitive activity, and approach to tasks. Strategies associated with a deep learning approach included generating mental images and analogies, hypothesizing, thought experimenting and predicting possible outcomes, self-explaining and theorizing, invoking personal experiences and prior knowledge and applying them to new situations, asking questions, thinking of specific examples, and looking for coherence by seeking patterns and relating different aspects of the task. When students used a deep approach, they also constantly monitored and self-evaluated the status of their comprehension, self-questioned, self-corrected their errors, attended to contradictory information, considered limitations in their own or others' ideas and critiqued them.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Education

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Chin, Christine Hui Li

Contributors dc:contributor

• David Brown

• Education, Educational Psychology

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9812557

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/80204