Page 166 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

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Chapter 7
The studies in this research project were carried out using the pilot version of teaching materials developed by the author of this thesis as the first step of our educational design research (Akker et al., 2006). Later, as a spin-off of this project, new teaching materials were developed by a team of experienced CS teachers lead by her, and they took into account the findings from this research project, as described in section 7.4 on practical implications of this project. However, we do not expect that using the pilot version of the teaching materials caused our results to be less reliable because the essential elements were present in that pilot version. Therefore, we have a reason to believe that the results would have been the same if we had used the new teaching materials instead.
7.4 Practical Implications
In this section, we reflect on the practical implications of our research project. We first describe the scientific paradigm shifts which made it possible to bring Computational Science into a secondary classroom, and then go on to discuss the practical implications.
The overarching practical contribution of this research project can be seen clearly by considering the shift of science paradigms (Hey et al., 2009) brought about by restructurations, i.e., “reformulating knowledge disciplines through new representational forms” (Wilensky & Papert, 2010). Many great theoretical scientific achievements — such as classical mechanics or Lotka-Volterra equations describing the dynamics of biological systems — were made possible through the developments in mathematics (which were, in turn, often driven by scientists’ needs). The corresponding restructuration meant that the scientific knowledge could be described in terms of mathematical terms rather than as narratives, bringing about a science paradigm shift from the description of observations to the use of mathematical models. The development and use of such mathematical representations is often a complex process. Additionally, advanced mathematical knowledge of calculus is necessary, so an active engagement in scientific activities in this manner is often beyond reach of secondary students. However, nowadays, the advances in possibilities offered by modern computing make it possible to describe phenomena in computational terms by simply describing the characteristics and behavior of the individuals forming the system which is being modeled. These computational descriptions — i.e., computational models