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Project MaRC, housed at the U.C. Berkeley School of Education, is a 3-year project funded by the National Science Foundation. The aim of this project is to study student "meta-representational competence," particularly as it relates to the use of scientific representations. Meta-representational competence (MRC) refers to knowledge about external representations, such as graphs and diagrams, and capabilities that cut across representations.

Meta-representational competence includes:

  • the ability to invent novel representations
  • the ability to critique existing representations
  • knowledge of the functions that representations perform
  • knowledge that facilitates the rapid learning of new representation
Our goals in this project are three-fold:
  1. Document student meta-representational competence. Our first goal is to investigate and document the nature of meta-representational competence.

  2. MRC and conceptual change. We believe that the development of representational competence is both an important impetus for and a component of conceptual change in science. It makes sense that one learns scientific concepts in part by learning to represent them. And one may hold that science entails, in part, a certain style of representing the world. As part of this research, we intend to explore this relationship between MRC and conceptual development in science.

  3. Design and analysis of interventions. Finally, we intend to explore educational implications of MRC in instruction. We believe that an understanding of meta-representational competence will allow us to tune the techniques that exist for teaching standard representations like graphing. More importantly, we also believe that this understanding will allow us to develop more substantially novel methods of teaching mathematics and science, which build on students' strengths in this area and compensate for weaknesses.
 
Support for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation, grant number RED-9553902 to Andrea A. diSessa, PI. Support by the foundation does not imply endorsement of any statements or opinions expressed by this project.