Model Construction and Transformation: A Study Exploring Students' Causal Explanations of Everday Phenomena

Abstract

This thesis explores studentsa?? diverse, dynamic and context-dependent approaches to causal explanations of everyday phenomena. The central contributions are: (1) a contextual, processual framework of causal explanations of everyday phenomena; (2) a multiple-space, contextual model of problem solving; (3) complementing and improving on research in model-based learning and causal explanations of everyday phenomena.The framework proposed involves several categories and their relationships. These categories are formulated along the line of generic versus concrete, ensuring a high degree of logical coherence among them. Further more, it shows the dynamic process of both situational model and causal model building and how these models interact with and mutually transform each other in the process of causal explanation. The interaction and mutual transformation among different elements of the proposed framework are formulated in a problem-solving framework and proposes several spaces interacting and mutually transforming each other.