ABSTRACT

In this chapter, we discuss the possible roles of models in learning, with computer models (simulations) as our focus. In learning from models, students’ learning processes center around the exploration of a model by changing values of input variables and observing resulting values of output variables. In this process, they experience rules of the simulated domain or discover aspects of these rules. Models can also play a role in the learning process when we ask students to construct models. In learning by modeling, students are required to construct an external model that can be simulated to reproduce phenomena observed in a real system. Finally, both ways of using models can be combined in what we refer to as model-based inquiry learning. Here, students encounter a computer model that they can explore by changing values of the input variables and by observing values of the output variables and then they reconstruct the model, including its internal functioning, so both models will behave similarly.