A research-based teaching sequence for teaching the concept of modelling to seventh-grade students

The purpose of this study was to construct and study the impact of a research-based sequence for teaching the concept of modelling to seventh-grade science students. We identified students' notions of models and the aspects of school science to be addressed regarding the model concept, which were then taken into account when we planned the learning sequence. The idea of modelling in science was taught while the students were learning about the change of states of matter in seventh-grade physics. A pre-interview revealed that the students' notions of models were very limited, while a post-interview showed that this improved in the course of the series of lessons. There was also a statistically significant difference in the students' understanding of modelling between our target group and a control group consisting of ninth-grade students who had received only the normal teaching. However, a delayed post-questionnaire completed a few months after the teaching sequence showed that the stability of learning results were dependent on whether models and modelling were used in the normal teaching conducted after the teaching sequence. Implications for teaching, teacher education and research are also addressed in this paper.