Making Models (description)

Science Thinking Skills
Making Models (description)

Exhibit List
Thinking Skills
     Seeing the Unseen
     Finding the Pattern
     Making Models
     Testing the Theory
     Putting It to Work
     Playing with Ideas
Exhibit Prototyping
Universal Design (Accessibility)
Education Standards
Traveling Exhibits


Introduction Goals Science Thinking Skills	Thematic Organization comment? Evaluation results Additional Resources

Slowly I began to formulate what I still consider the fundamental fact about learning: anything is easy if you can assimilate it into your collection of models. If you can't, anything can be painfully difficult. . . What an individual can learn, and how he learns it, depends on what models he has available. This raises, recursively, the question of how he learned those models. Thus the 'laws of learning' must be about how intellectual structures grow out of one another and about how, in the process, they acquire both logical and emotional form.
S. Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas

In January 2000 the Museum of Science will begin development of Making Models, the fourth science activity center to be developed in the Museum’s long-range exhibit plan focusing on providing visitors practice with science thinking skills. We hope it will be made possible in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation Informal Science Education program.

Goals

The goals of the Making Models project are to

help visitors recognize the presence and value of models in the museum environment, in other educational settings and in their everyday lives;
help visitors become familiar with several types of models that are essential elements of science and engineering: physical models, conceptual models, mathematical models and computer simulations; and
provide visitors with practice in four specific science thinking skills associated with making and using models:
- recognizing the similarity between models and the things they represent,
- assessing the strengths and limitations of models in explaining and predicting the behavior of the objects or phenomena they represent,
- using models to raise questions, communicate ideas, and test hypotheses in many different contexts, and
- creating their own models to explain things they cannot observe directly.

Science Thinking Skills

Benchmarks for Science Literacy devotes considerable attention to the role of models in science and learning. The following skills have been drawn largely from Benchmarks for Science Literacy, but have been regrouped by skill rather than by school grade level in order to establish a suite of thinking skills associated with making and using models. To be skillful in the use of models, students must learn to:

Recognize the similarity between models and the things they represent. Examples of activities appropriate for different age levels from K - 12 include:

discussing how dolls, stuffed animals, toy cars and model airplanes are like or unlike the real things;
talking about how the things they play with relate to real things in the world (in this regard, imaginative conversation is better than getting the "right" answer);
reflecting upon how graphs and other mathematical concepts relate to nature;
recognizing what is and is not a model.

Assess the limits of a model in accurately describing and predicting the behavior of the real thing it represents. Examples of activities appropriate for different age levels include:

comparing objects, drawings, and constructions to the things they portray or resemble;
modifying models and discussing their limitations in predicting how the real thing would change;
discovering the limits of reduced scale models because of many reasons, including that some factors change more than others;
using computers for graphing and simulations that compute and display the results of changing factors in the model.

Create their own models to explain things they cannot observe directly. Examples of activities appropriate for different age levels which are prerequisites for being skillful at creating models of their own include:

getting to know about materials, things, and processes in the accessible world around them through direct, hands-on experience;
acquiring images and understandings that come from drawing, painting, sculpting, playing music, acting in plays, listening to and telling stories, reading, participating in games and sports, doing work, and living life;
imagining that something they do not understand is in some way like something that they do understand;
learning how to create different types of models in many different contexts.

Use models in many different contexts to gain new knowledge. Examples of activities appropriate for different age levels include:

testing their own models and changing them as more information is acquired;
using conceptual models to suggest interesting questions;
carrying out an experiment with a model that is not possible or practical to do with the real thing;
identifying the kinds of conclusions you can draw from experiments with models.

This collection of science thinking skills associated with models will form the basis for component development and formative evaluation in all aspects of the Making Models project.