One Instructional Sequence Fits all? A Conceptual Analysis of the Applicability of Concreteness Fading
Schedule
Thursday, February 11, 2021
16:00 UTC
Dr Tommi Kokkonen / Prof Lennart Schalk
University of Helsinki / University of Education Schwyz
Host: Analogical Minds
Recording
Open recording
Event Information
Recording
Available
Host
Analogical Minds
Duration
60 minutes
Abstract
According to the concreteness fading approach, instruction should start with concrete representations and progress stepwise to representations that are more idealized. Various researchers have suggested that concreteness fading is a broadly applicable instructional approach. In this talk, we conceptually analyze examples of concreteness fading in mathematics and various science domains. In this analysis, we draw on theories of analogical and relational reasoning and on the literature about learning with multiple representations. Furthermore, we report on an experimental study in which we employed concreteness fading in advanced physics education. The results of the conceptual analysis and the experimental study indicate that concreteness fading may not be as generalizable as has been suggested. The reasons for this limited generalizability are twofold. First, the types of representations and the relations between them differ across different domains. Second, the instructional goals between domains and the subsequent roles of the representations vary.
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