Systems Object Framework: a framework for describing students’ depiction of object organisation within systems

Developing students’ ability to think about systems, as opposed to isolated facts, is of central importance in much of science teaching. Prior work in this area has focused on students’ recognition of the processes occurring within a system. Comparatively, little work has been done on how students organise the objects that are contained within the system. Understanding how objects are organised within a system structure can promote understanding of the processes relating to the objects and advance students’ thinking about systems. A systematic literature review revealed different existing theoretical perspectives on object arrangement within systems. These perspectives were combined into a single framework, the Systems Object Framework (SOF), that can be used to characterise student ideas about object arrangements. The SOF was used to analyse object arrangements depicted by students in pre and post-concept maps that were collected as part of a study on a systems-based curriculum. This analysis provided support for the structure of the SOF and showed that the SOF allows for tracking of changes in students’ representation of object arrangements. The SOF contributes to the field by proposing new questions to be investigated and providing a common analytical tool that permits greater consistency across future studies.

在多数科学教学中，培养学生的系统思维能力而非孤立事实记忆能力，是核心要务。该领域既往研究多聚焦于学生对系统内发生过程的识别能力，而针对学生如何组织系统内所含对象的相关研究则相对匮乏。明晰对象在系统结构中的组织方式，有助于理解与对象相关的过程，并推动学生的系统思维发展。通过系统性文献综述，本研究梳理了现有关于系统内对象排布的各类理论视角，并将其整合为统一框架——系统对象框架（Systems Object Framework, SOF），该框架可用于刻画学生对对象组织方式的认知。本研究借助SOF框架，对某基于系统思维的课程研究中收集的学生前后概念图所呈现的对象排布情况展开分析。本次分析验证了SOF框架的结构合理性，并证实该框架可用于追踪学生对象组织方式认知表征的变化情况。SOF框架通过提出待探索的新研究问题，并提供通用分析工具以提升未来同类研究间的分析一致性，为该领域发展作出贡献。