I finished this dissertation in the summer of 1999 as part of the Joint Doctoral Program in Math and Science Education at San Diego State University and University of California at San Diego.

I did the bulk of this work at the Center for Research in Math and Science Education (CRMSE). Many thanks to the CPU project and Fred Goldberg, my chair.

This dissertation is a study of students' model development processes in a physical science course for preservice elementary teachers. It details the models of magnetic materials developed and used by students during a unit on static electricity and magnetism. In this inquiry-based course, the class developed and formally accepted a model, in the form of diagrams and descriptions, that is very similar to the accepted magnetic domains model. They did this without textbooks or lectures on magnetism. Before adopting this model, however, most groups in the class temporarily used models involving opposite charges at the two ends of magnetized nails.

How did the students do it? The explanation involves detailed study of the groups' interactions and use of structure in the classroom environment. This dissertation uses two theoretical frameworks to analyze interactions. It applies Yackel and Cobb's (1996) concepts of classroom social norms to characterize aspects of the classroom participation structure which affected groups' construction and declaration of models. It also applies distributed cognition ideas to analyze the sense-making conversations that small groups had when constructing group responses.

This research found that conversations in one small group could be characterized into sixteen categories. Important categories included "extending ideas" which involved gradual deepening and elaboration of the group's understanding of their model(s), and "joint typing", an interactive process by which group members collaborated on typed statements or group diagrams and simultaneously developed common language for communicating their ideas to each other. Some of these categories of activity were closely connected to computer use.

Also, four classroom norms are described. One small group social classroom norm involved group members developing a "common ground" consisting of agreed-upon group statements. Three sociophysics norms which characterize the whole class interactions as well as those of the small group involved a distinction between generalizations of phenomena and theoretical statements, class criteria for accepting evidence, and the obligation for each group to have a model of magnetic materials that they could support with acceptable evidence.

Here are the chapters, hurriedly transformed to pdf format. The images are not pretty, but hopefully they are legible. You will probably want to "save this link as. . ."

Let me know if you have success or failure in downloading these. Then let me know what you think!

Preliminary pages and contents
1. Introduction to Issues
2. Theoretical Perspective and Review of Literature
3. Research Setting and Methods
4. Analysis of Model Developments
5. Analyses of Group Interactions
6. Discussion and Implications
Appendix 1: Sample Documents (3.5 MB)
Appendix 2: Students' Diagrams and Descriptions (1 MB)
Appendix 3: Sample Transcript of Group Work
References

If you need the Acrobat reader, you can get it here.