The Understandings of Consequence Project is supported by The National Science Foundation.

We are looking for a small number of teachers, both local and at a distance, who are interested in testing a new website of teaching materials and approaches that we are developing for the Understandings of Consequence Project. If you might be interested in participating, please send an email to Amanda_Heffner-Wong@pz.harvard.edu for more information.

Click here to visit our current Teacher Resource Website.

Research shows that students have difficulty achieving deep understanding of many fundamental science concepts, for instance, the nature of matter, pressure, density, and electrical circuits to name but a few. After students have presumably learned the scientific explanations, they often revert back to their initial explanations.

The Understandings of Consequence Project has demonstrated that part of the problem arises from differences in how students and scientists think about cause and effect. Scientific explanations often require students to structure knowledge in ways that contradict their expectations about the nature of how causes and effects behave. Such explanations can involve: causal mechanisms that are inferred or abstract; causal patterns that extend beyond linear and unidirectional to cyclic, reciprocal, and non-sequential; correspondences between causes and effects that are in various respects probabilistic; and causal agents that are decentralized and involve aspects of emergence. These are ways of thinking that students typically are not familiar with. Thus students attempt to assimilate information about complex concepts into simplistic causal structures which ultimately distort the information.

In order to achieve deep understanding of scientific explanations, students need to learn the levels of these dimensions that fit the level of explanation needed. We have developed a taxonomy of causal models to guide these teaching and learning efforts. We have also developed a taxonomy of epistemological "moves", such as comparing more than one model and being alert to possible gaps in one's explanation, that serve scientific inquiry and lead to more complex conceptions.

Through a series of intervention studies, the project demonstrated that impacting students' assumptions about the nature of causality is effective in helping students restructure their knowledge and achieve scientific understandings. We engaged students in activities designed to reveal the causal structure of a concept and in explicit discussion about the nature of causality involved. For instance, in exploring the role of density in sinking and floating, students are shown a small piece of candle that sinks when placed in a liquid and are asked to predict what will happen when a big piece of candle is placed in another container of liquid. When it floats, students start to explore what is going on. The outcome and ensuing discussion pushes them beyond a linear, feature-based causality of "the weight makes it sink" to an interactive causality, where they begin to focus on the liquid and the object and recognize the causal pattern is a relationship between greater and lesser density of objects and liquid. The papers below elaborate our findings for each topic of study.

Our recent papers discuss our findings on transfer. In general, we found good evidence that students can transfer their understanding of structurally similar causal forms between science concepts with and without support and that they can transfer their understanding about the nature of causality to structurally non-similar causal forms with support.

The Understandings of Consequence Curriculum Units on Density, Ecosystems, Electrical Circuits, and Air Pressure are available at our Teacher Resource Website. Some of these units are featured on the Essential Science Series airing on the Annenberg CPB channel (http://www.learner.org).

With NSF support (#ESI-0455664), we are currently collaborating with the Harvard Smithsonian Science Media Group to develop an interactive website and professional development materials for teachers. Teachers interested in hearing more about it and possibly becoming involved in the design and test phases of the project should contact us.

Selected Publications and Presentations

Documents are in PDF Format. To download Adobe Acrobat Reader, click here:

Grotzer, T.A., & Lincoln, R. (in press). Educating for "intelligent environmental action" in an age of global warming, in S. Moser & L. Dilling (Eds.) Communicating Urgency--Facilitating Social Change: Strategies for Dealing with the Climate Crisis. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Heffner-Wong, A., Grotzer, T.A., & Morris, L. (2008, March).  The Nature of Scientific Thinking: Assessing How Students Respond to Lessons Designed to Develop Understanding of the Nature of Science and Modeling.  Paper presented at the National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST) Annual International Conference, Baltimore, MD.

Perkins, D.N., & Grotzer, T.A. (2005). Dimensions of causal understanding: The role of complex causal models in students' understanding of science. Studies in Science Education, 41, 117-166.

DeVito, B., & Grotzer, T.A. (2005, April). Characterizing Discourse in Two Science Classrooms by the Cognitive Processes Demonstrated by Students and Teachers. Paper presented at the National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST) Conference, Dallas, TX.

Grotzer, T.A. (2005, April). Transferring Structural Knowledge about the Nature of Causality to Isomorphic and Non-Isomorphic Topics. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Conference, Montreal, Quebec.

Grotzer, T.A. (2004, October). Putting everyday science within reach: Addressing patterns of thinking that limit science learning. Principal Leadership,16-21.

Grotzer, T.A., & Sudbury, M. (2004). Causal patterns in simple circuits. President and Fellows of Harvard College for Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA.

Basca, B.B., & Grotzer, T.A. (2003). Causal patterns in air pressure-related phenomena. President and Fellows of Harvard College for Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge, MA.

Grotzer, T.A. (2003). Learning to understand the forms of causality implicit in scientific explanations. Studies in Science Education. 39, 1-74.

Grotzer, T.A., & Basca, B.B. (2003). Helping students to grasp the underlying causal structures when learning about ecosystems: How does it impact understanding? Journal of Biological Education, 38,(1)16-29.

Grotzer, T.A. (2003, March). Transferring structural knowledge about the nature of causality: An empirical test of three levels of transfer. Paper presented at the National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST) Conference, Philadelphia, PA.

Mittlefehldt, S., & Grotzer, T.A. (2003, March). Using metacognition to facilitate the transfer of causal models in learning density and pressure. Paper presented at the National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST) Conference, Philadelphia, PA.

Ritscher, R., Lincoln, R., & Grotzer, T.A. (2003, March). Understanding density and pressure: How students' meaning-making impacts their transfer of causal models. Paper presented at the National Association of Research in Science Teaching (NARST) Conference, Philadelphia, PA.

Grotzer, T.A. (2002). Causal patterns in ecosystems. Cambridge, MA: Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Grotzer, T.A. (2002). Expanding our vision for educational technology: Procedural, conceptual, and structural knowledge. Educational Technology, 42(2) 52-59.

Basca, B.B., & Grotzer, T.A. (2001, April). Focusing on the nature of causality in a unit on pressure: How does it affect students understanding? Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, Seattle, WA.

Bell, B., Carroll, R., & Grotzer, T.A. (2000, April). How causal models can help or hinder an understanding of force and motion concepts. Paper presented at the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Conference, Orlando.

Bell-Basca, B., Grotzer, T.A., Donis, K., & Shaw, S. (2000, April). Using domino and relational causality to analyze ecosystems: Realizing what goes around comes around. Paper presented at the National Association of Research in science Teaching, New Orleans, LA.

Donis, K., & Grotzer, T.A. (2000, April). Teaching about domino and cyclic causality to help students understand ecosystems. Paper presented at the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Conference, Orlando.

Edgar, M., & Grotzer, T.A. (2000, April). Causal dimensions that create difficulty in understanding evolution. Paper presented at the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) Conference, New Orleans, LA.

Grotzer, T.A. (2000, April). How conceptual leaps in understanding the nature of causality can limit learning: An example from electrical circuits. Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA.

Grotzer, T.A., & Perkins, D.N. (2000, April). A taxonomy of causal models: The conceptual leaps between models and students’ reflections on them. Paper presented at the annual conference of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, New Orleans, LA.

Grotzer, T.A., & Sudbury, M. (2000, April). Moving beyond underlying linear causal models of electrical circuits. Paper presented at the annual conference of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching, New Orleans, LA.

Houghton, C., Record, K., Bell, B., & Grotzer, T.A. (2000, April). Conceptualizing density with a relational systemic model. Paper presented at the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) Conference, New Orleans, LA.

Perkins, D.N., & Grotzer, T.A. (2000, April). Models and moves: Focusing on dimensions of causal complexity to achieve deeper scientific understanding. Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA.

Sudbury, M., Grotzer, T.A., & Bell, B. (2000, April). Helping students learn about electricity by examining their causal stories. Paper presented at the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Conference, Orlando.

Grotzer, T.A., & Bell, B.B. (1999). Negotiating the funnel: Guiding students toward understanding elusive generative concepts. In L. Hetland & S. Veenema (Eds.), The Project Zero Classroom: Views on Understanding. Cambridge, MA: Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Click here to link to papers from Complex Causality and Conceptual Change, American Educational Research Association (AERA) Symposium, April 2001.

This project is supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. REC-9725502 to Tina Grotzer and David Perkins. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the National Science Foundation.

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