Students’ Learning Strategies With Multiple Representations: Explanations of the Human Breathing Mechanism

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to understand how students utilized multiple representations to learn and explain science concepts, in this case the human breathing mechanism. The study was conducted with Grade 11 students in a human biology class. Semistructured interviews and a two-tier diagnostic test were administered to evaluate students’ learning strategies of integrating multiple representations. The functions of multiple representations (complementary, constraining, and deeper understanding) suggested by Ainsworth (2008) were adapted as the analytical framework to better describe the participating students’ learning strategies with multiple representations (access complementary information, apply one representation to interpret the other, and evaluate representations). The categorization of students’ learning strategies facilitated interpreting their diverse understanding in relation to the multiple representations. In addition to a summary of students’ learning strategies, three case examples are presented to show how the framework was applied in the analysis and to discuss how the learning strategies interacted with students’ understanding of the multiple representations and of the concept.

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