Designing Models
In MOVIE 1, Vanderbilt's Richard Lehrer presents compelling
cases where primary students, even those in the first
grade, become involved in doing investigations in biology
that also involve designing models of complex systems
in nature. He describes how one class needed to develop
a model that would sustain the process by which tomatoes
rot.
In a second example, Lehrer tells of the processes
and problems that 5th grade students when designing
a model for a pond ecology. Most important are the questions
students usually raise once copying the natural system
fails. What parts of nature should be included from a
pond ecology, and what should be left out?
Lehrer relates the issues related to models to the
design of scientific instruments, and that mathematics
can be useful in thinking about the different patterns
of observations that get made by different instruments
measuring the same thing.
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