Seminar: Dr Tamer Amin. How do simulations contribute to scientific understanding? Insights from Conceptual Change and Conceptual Metaphor.
1.30-3pm, 17th June 2019, Paterson's Land room 1.26, Moray House School of Education & Sport
Abstract
How do simulations help learners understand abstract scientific concepts? We don’t have very good answers to this question. Some work on simulations, especially immersive experiences, has offered as an answer the general claim from the field of embodied cognition that abstract concepts are grounded in sensorimotor experiences. But this work doesn’t have specific accounts of how aspects of these experiences contribute to the understanding of specific scientific concepts. Other work has been formulated narrowly within a conceptual change perspective, and specific features of the designs of the simulations have been motivated by an analysis of learning challenges of specific concepts within explicitly articulated models of concept change. But this work has not embraced the assumptions of embodied cognition. In this presentation, I will present a view of conceptual change informed by conceptual metaphor theory that can help us integrate insights from both literatures. I argue that this can help us offer richer accounts of how simulations help learners understand abstract scientific concepts.