Mental-Models of the Circulatory System: Mapping Out Tweens' Thinking

Background/Purpose: This study examined how sixth-grade students develop their Circulatory System Mental Models (CSMM). Vosniadou’s (1994) Framework Theory of Conceptual Change guided this ethnographic research into the nature of the academic-beliefs (ontological and epistemic) students hold about human biology. These beliefs underlie how learners organize their CSMM and develop naïve theories to describe circulatory system adaptations to exercise.  During instruction, tweens undergo a knowledge revision process as they seek to integrate new information. They develop synthetic models that contain some misrepresentation of knowledge. This occurs because learners internalize information about scientific phenomenon they cannot directly observe/perceive (e.g., heart function) without revising the entrenched academic-beliefs they unconsciously developed since infancy through their everyday experiences.

Method: Students from one sixth-grade class from two schools completed questionnaires. Eighteen students participated in follow-up one-on-one interviews incorporating student drawings. Document collection, field observations and teacher interviews were also conducted. Constant comparison analysis procedures, member check, and peer review were conducted to ensure analysis trustworthiness.

Analysis/Results: Students utilized information gained at home and school in conjunction with their personal perceptions of exercise-induced physiological changes (EIPC) to create their CSMM. Five CSMM emerged that reflected students’ similar and dissimilar academic-beliefs in varying configurations. Across all models, students’ discourse reflected the ontology that they attributed machine-like qualities, properties, and behaviors to the human body.  They upheld an epistemic-belief that exercise had a causal effect on the body machine: e.g. “exercise is a cause-effect type of thing.” Differences were manifested in how students’ organized their CRMM because they held varying ontological beliefs regarding (a) the components of the circulatory-system and (b) their awareness for the body’s mechanical vs. biochemical nature. Students differed in their epistemic-beliefs regarding how body processes occurred.

Conclusions: It is important to examine how students believe their body works because it influences their interpretations of EIPC, which in turn, may influence their participation. Albeit naive, students’ CSMM should be appreciated as attempts to utilize their sensations of EIPC to make sense of the complexity inherent in an exercising body.  A schematic map developed from our finding identified the areas in which the students in our study experienced conceptual difficulty. The insights gained about tween’s understanding of the circulatory system can be utilized by teachers to develop instructional experiences aimed to target both knowledge and belief revision necessary to affect behavior change in physical education, a learning domain where the ultimate aim is to transform student attitudes (Mason, 2002).