Design research in this study

This study will be realised as a design research, which has been influenced by the design-based research approach and the educational reconstruction model. The study will be realised in one cycle, which begins by research, continues by design and ends in the research phase. The first phase of the study analysis of content structure is research-orientated, the second phase designing the learning content emphasises the designing work, and the last phase instruction and evaluation realises the design solution and investigates learning. The whole cycle with its sub-phases is described in Figure 1.

In the first phase of the study, the history of DC-circuit phenomena is analysed by content analysis. This means carrying out research into the experimentality of the DC-circuit phenomena and the historical models. This analysis is done in the spirit of the critical-historical and cognitive-historical methods (sections 4.4.4 and 4.4.5) to find out the main features of the historical models. The found historical models are then compared with pupils’ common external representations reported in previous science education research (see section 6.2) of the subject matter. Furthermore, in the background of the analysis are the scientific models of DC-circuit phenomena. The first phase of the study investigates the first research question 1: How did the historical models of DC-circuit phenomena develop in Volta’s time? See the results in 1 in chapter 5.

The second phase in the design research includes the concrete designing work and the charting of needs assessment (6.1). In this phase the teaching models for instruction are designed (see results 2 in chapter 6). In addition, the prototype of instruction is tested (see section 4.2.3).

The third phase of the study consists of the realisation of the actual teaching experiment (see section 6.7 and the evaluation section. The empirical data is analysed by content analysis (see section 4.4.1) and as the results we obtained answers to research question 2: How will the small group’s external representations of DC-circuit phenomena develop during the teaching experiment? The results are depicted in chapter 7.

60 4.2.3 Design procedure

This chapter describes the design research process, and the members of design in different phases of the project. The chapter also includes a description of timing the process. See Table 5, Design research timetable.

The project started in 2000 with research into the historical models of electric current (phase 1). In this phase I was the only participant at the time. During autumn 2001 a needs assessment for the teaching experiment was done as part of another design project (Juuti, Lavonen, Kallunki and Meisalo 2004; see the details in section 6.1). After completing the phase of the historical models the project was continued with undergraduate student, Laura Karhunen. In this phase (continuing phase 1) the task was to compare the historical models found in the science education literature with reported pupil’s external representations of DC-circuit phenomena. The results of this phase were reported in ESERA 2003. The co-operation with Laura also included doing initial plans to analyse her data of learning DC-circuit phenomena at high school level (Karhunen, Koponen and Kallunki 2003). The aim of the co-operation from my side was to set up the last phase (3), the realisation of the teaching experiment. The design work (phase 2) for the teaching experiment was done in autumn 2003 with undergraduate student, Saija Lehtonen. The planning included meetings with my supervisors, and class teachers.

Testing the prototype of the teaching experiment (continuing phase 2) was done at Vallila Comprehensive School (Lower stage), on the 2^nd of February 2004. During the test a pilot of a preliminary interview for a chosen group of four pupils was done. Also the first two lessons of the teaching experiment were tested on the whole class of 26 pupils of 5^th graders. The aim of the piloting was to test technical details and subject matter, and on the basis of it, the main change to the lessons was to choose only one small group for the final teaching experiment. This modification was done for technical and subject matter reasons: it was difficult to videotape in the classroom because of the background noise, and it seemed plausible that the chosen small group would concentrate better on the content in a more peaceful place. Because the purpose of the research was to focus on small group learning, not to the whole class, it was decided to go ahead with this change.

Thus this change meant the study was done in unnatural experimental situations. The studies of De Vries et al. (2002) and Sherman and Klein (1995) were also done by making the same kinds of compromises to increase the researcher’s control over interfering variables. In these studies separate pairs of students worked in a special laboratory outside the classroom (Bennett et al. 2004, 56).

The final teaching experiment week (phase 3) took place at the end of February 2004 at Helsinki Second Teacher Training School in Viikki (Lower stage). The teaching experiment consisted of three interviews (preliminary interview, intermediate interview and final interview) and five small group lessons. The same experiment was realised for a small group of third-graders and fifth-graders. See section 6.7 for more detailed information. See also Table 5 and Table 6 below for the timetables of the whole design research and the teaching experiment.

61 Table 5 Design research timetable.

Phase of the research Date Participants of the

research

2000 – 2001 Veera Kallunki

Phase 2, Needs assessment for the teaching experiment (Juuti, Lavonen, Kallunki and

Meisalo 2004)

Autumn 2001 Kalle Juuti, Jari Lavonen, Veera Kallunki and Veijo

Spring 2003 Veera Kallunki and Laura Karhunen^*

Phase 2, planning the teaching experiment

Autumn 2003 Veera Kallunki

and

Saija Lehtonen Continuing phase 2, testing the

prototype of teaching experiment

February 2004

Phase 3, realisation of teaching experiment

February 2004 Phase 3, tentative results of

teaching experiment (Kallunki 2004)

December 2004 Veera Kallunki

* as a part of two partially overlapping research projects carried out by myself and Laura.

Table 6 Timetable of the teaching experiment. The topics of the teaching experiment are described in section 6.7 in Figure 32.

Date Mon 23^rd of

62 4.3 Data gathering methods

In this study data was gathered in two phases. In phase 1 the historical data was gathered, and in phase 3 the empirical data was gathered. Figure 12 below sums up the sources of information.

Figure 12 Data is gathered from written historical documents and videotaped small-group sessions.