Understandings of Consequence > Overview





	Overview Background Project Team Papers Curriculum Modules Density Ecosystems Pressure Simple Circuits Related Links Helpful Sites		Background Research shows that students have difficulty achieving deep understanding of many basic science concepts. Even when it appears that they have learned the scientific explanations, they often revert back to their initial ideas later. The Understandings of Consequence Project 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 make a more complex set of assumptions about how causes and effects behave than students typically do. What kinds of causal understandings give students difficulty when learning science? Mechanism (What makes the event happen?): Students find it hard when scientific explanations involve non-obvious mechanisms (such as air pressure, microbes, and so forth) or inferred or abstract mechanisms, (such as protons and electrons, molecules, etc). Pattern (What does the pattern of cause or impact look like?): Students often impose simple linear patterns when scientific concepts involve more complex patterns, for example, cyclic (as in decay), reciprocal (as in symbiosis), or relational (as in relative density or air pressure). Co-variation of Causes and Effects (How reliably and regularly does the "effect" follow the "cause"?): Students find it hard to reason about cause and effect relationships that involve probability (as in the transmission of disease or occurrence of lightning.) Agency (Is one "thing" or person responsible for the outcome or is cause distributed across many things or persons?): Students often attribute an outcome to one thing or person and don't realize when agency is distributed across the actions of many things or people, (as in beehives, flocking of birds, and the behavior of slime molds.) This website contains a set of curriculum modules that are designed to help students learn to think about causality as scientists do in the context of the particular topic. Each unit identifies the difficulties that students tend to have in that topic and offers resources to address the difficulties. Causal concepts are introduced in the context of and in service to the science understandings, not vice versa. You can find detailed information about the research project that led to the development of these modules under "Papers."