Notes from Webinar on Representational Competence

Introduction

• Speaker: Maya Popova, Assistant Professor at UNC Greensboro
• Background:
  • Bachelor's at Ivanova State University, Russia
  • PhD at Miami University
  • Postdoc at University of Nebraska

Topic of Webinar: Representational Competence

• Representational competence is essential in chemistry education.
• Representations are the primary language of chemistry, used to communicate phenomena at various levels (macroscopic and sub-microscopic).

Importance of Representational Competence

• Students face the challenge of learning specific chemistry concepts while also mastering the language of representations.
• Students encounter multiple representations for the same molecule or phenomenon, leading to potential confusion.
• Goal: Support students in developing skills to navigate various representations successfully.

Framework for Representational Competence

• Cosman and Russell's Framework:
  • Definition: A set of skills and practices that allow reflective use of representations to think about, communicate, and act on chemical phenomena.
  • Skill Components:
    • Ability to interpret, generate, translate, use representations.
    • Understanding the affordances and limitations of representations.
    • Selecting optimal representations for specific purposes.
    • Developing an epistemological understanding of representations.
• Although widely cited, there is no consensus on a unified framework for representational competence in science education.

Research Directions

• The research group is exploring representational competence through multiple studies:
  • Developing an assessment instrument
  • Interviews and eye tracking to characterize student reasoning
  • Evaluating textbooks for support of representational competence
  • Investigating faculty support for students' skills development

Main Claim of the Presentation

• Current instruction offers little to no support for developing students' metarepresentational competence skills.

Metarepresentational Competence Skills

• Definition: Reflective and purposeful use of representations.
• Importance: Students can perform tasks without understanding the underlying reasons or purposes.
• Example tasks can help students think critically about representational choices and their implications.

Proposed Model of Representational Competence Skills

• Differentiation of lower-level foundational skills and higher-level metarepresentational skills.
• Skills interconnected; proficiency in foundational skills supports higher-level skills.

Implications for Research and Teaching

• Research should analyze student reasoning with each skill individually and collectively.
• Teaching should prioritize both foundational and higher-level metarepresentational skills.
• Design tasks that emphasize the importance of understanding representations in context.

Evidence from Research Studies

Textbook Study

• Analysis of five organic chemistry textbooks focused on how they support representational competence.
• Findings showed limited support for developing skills related to selecting optimal representations and understanding their limitations.
• Some textbooks provided stronger support than others, particularly in teaching methods for different representations.

Faculty Study

• Interviews with 13 chemistry professors about their approaches to teaching representations.
• Results indicated a focus on interpreting, generating, and translating representations, but limited discussion around understanding their affordances and limitations.

Conclusion and Future Directions

• Current instruction lacks support for metarepresentational competence skills, indicating a need for change.
• Responsibility lies with both instructors and the research community to develop resources and professional development opportunities.

Acknowledgments

• Thanks to students and collaborators involved in the research efforts.