The ‘Ins’ and ‘Outs’ of Learning: Internal Representations and External Visualizations

Abstract

Science classrooms teach complex topics by exposing students to information through a variety of methodologies, including lectures, discussions, readings, lab experiences, and representational experiences. The goal of these activities is to help students build internal representations for course content – information stored in memory that students can retrieve to generate inferences, solve problems, and make decisions. But what are these internal representations like, and what does the nature of these representations suggest for the design of learning methodologies such as external representations? This chapter is an introduction to current and contemporary work on mental representations. In particular, we emphasize theoretical and empirical views that have focused on links between perception and action, and what those links imply for learning. In this way, basic research on the nature of memory can provide pragmatic suggestions with respect to the design, implementation, and assessment of what are commonly called ‘visualizations’ (i.e., external visual representations of processes) as tools for science learning.