Enhancing the Quality of Science Learning through a Representation-intensive Pedagogy (DP120101763)

This project investigated the quality of science learning occurring through a representation construction approach to science teaching and learning, supported by students’ use of digital technologies, and new approaches to assessment and teacher professional learning. The pedagogy involves students generating, negotiating and evaluating multimodal representations as resources for reasoning and learning relating to the key dimensions of the new Australian Science curriculum. It ill investigated re-framing assessment around students’ developing representational capabilities to support and monitor student learning. School based action-learning teams in NSW and Victoria extended and refined the pedagogy to inform curriculum policy aimed at student engagement with science.

ARC funded project: 2012-2014

Team members: Russell Tytler, Peter Hubber, Gail Chittleborough (Deakin University), Vaughan Prain, Latrobe University, Garry Hoban, University of Wollongong, Peter Aubusson, University of Technology, Sydney.

Sample publications: 

Hubber, P., Tytler, R., & Chittleborough, G. (2017). Representation Construction: A Guided Inquiry Approach for Science Education. In R. Jorgensen & K. Larkin (Eds.), STEM Education in the Junior Secondary School (pp. 57-87). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.

Hubber, P., & Tytler, R. (2017). Enacting a representation construction approach to teaching and learning astronomy. In D. Treagust, R. Duit, & H. Fischer (Eds.), Multiple representations in Physics Education (pp. 139-161). London: Springer.

Tytler, R. & Hubber, P. (2016). Constructing representations to learn science, in B. Hand, M. McDermott, & V. Prain (eds.) Using multimodal representations to support learning in the science classroom, pp. 159-181. Switzerland: Springer. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-16450-2_9