REASONING ABOUT ELECTROCHEMICAL CELLS IN A CONCEPT MAPPING ACTIVITY AND IN

Abstract. In this paper, we study students ’ actions in the classroom as a matter of learning to participate in situated practices. We investigate how learning is constituted in two classroom activities commonly regarded as directing students towards manipulating either concrete material or scientific ideas. We audio-recorded pairs of students as they engaged in a common reasoning task about electrochemical cells, either as part of constructing a concept map or working with a real electrochemical cell. In both settings students needed to learn the rules, norms and techniques of the practice as part of their reasoning. This included techniques for attaining an acceptable concept map, or for how to make correct and relevant measures of current and voltage in the electrochemical cell. Students also learned norms for including terms in the concept map, or for distinguishing and naming particulars of the electrochemical cell. Our results show that similarities and differences between two classroom settings can be specified in new ways by studying them as situated practices. How science is taught in the classroom may not primarily be framed as questions about the effectiveness of different methods, but of what students need to learn in order to act competently in different relevant practices.