Research at the Interface of Cognition, Education, and Disciplinary Science

Overview Meeting the challenges of the 21 century will require both workers who are highly competent in fields of science and engineering and citizens who have a high degree of science literacy. Accomplishing these goals will, in turn, require changes to undergraduate science and engineering education (National Research Council, 2012). With their expertise in learning, memory, problem solving, and diagrammatic and spatial reasoning, cognitive scientists are ideally situated to make important contributions to this endeavor. To gain competence in STEM fields, students must learn to engage in two distinct types of reasoning: (a) how to interpret and reason with domain-specific representations such as diagrams of evolutionary trees, digital images showing brain anatomy, and 3-D models of chemistry molecules; (b) how to reason about processes that operate on those structures. For example, a variety of transformational processes (e.g., compression, tension, shear) operate to produce geologic events (e.g., folds, faults). The distinction between structures and processes, as well as the interplay between them, is a core issue in cognitive science. This symposium, moderated by Novick and Hegarty, includes five talks, by leading experts in their fields, on current research at the interface of cognitive science, education, and other science disciplines. Three talks will consider how cognitive and perceptual principles affect comprehension and learning of science concepts and disciplinary representations. Two talks will examine how investigating representations, reasoning strategies, and science practices broadens our understanding of spatial thinking and reveals previously unrecognized spatial reasoning processes.