A construct-modeling approach to develop a learning progression of how students understand the structure of matter

Abstract

This paper builds on the current literature base about learning progressions in science to address the question, “What is the nature of the learning progression in the content domain of the structure of matter?” We introduce a learning progression in response to that question and illustrate a methodology, the Construct Modeling (Wilson, 2005) approach, for investigating the progression through a developmentally based iterative process. This study puts forth a progression of how students understand the structure of matter by empirically inter-relating constructs of different levels of sophistication using a sample of 1,087 middle grade students from a large diverse public school district in t..