Hair-raising fun! Making sense of student-generated diagrams

Abstract

Science diagrams are an integral part of science because they are an important means of conveying and visualizing abstract science content (Kozma 2003). In recent years, researchers have demonstrated the educational benefits of encouraging students to draw their own conceptual diagrams, rather than focusing on interpreting diagrams given to them (Tippett 2016). Drawing conceptual diagrams not only helps students’ sensemaking process but also their construction of deeper scientific understanding (Ainsworth et al. 2011). To help students utilize this powerful learning strategy, teachers need to be aware of how to support and guide students’ drawing diagrams. However, there are no practical resources for teachers to adopt to interpret students’ diagrams and provide students with constructive feedback for conceptual and representational knowledge development. In this article, we explain the method that researchers developed after many rounds of evaluating student-generated diagrams. We start with an explanation of the lesson and the importance of teachers having hands-on experiences drawing the diagrams before the lesson. Then, we suggest that teachers explore the concept to gain a deeper understanding and ensure that the clarity of the concept is evident. Then during and after the lesson, we look at four overarching procedural features of analyzing students’ diagrams: the importance of focusing on the big picture as well as on details by zooming in and out, use of representational conventions, reading the written text, and scrutinizing the diagram multiple times.