Feathers to Fish Gills: how students understand surface area to volume relationships

This study explored the relationships among middle school students’ reasoning and visual-spatial abilities with their understanding of the scale concept of surface area to volume. Although reasoning ability and visual-spatial skills have been shown to contribute to learning science the relationships of these factors to applying surface area to volume relationships in science contexts have not been fully explored. This study examined surface area to volume understandings pre and post to an instructional intervention. Correlation and multiple linear regression analyses showed that visual spatial ability is related to understandings of surface area to volume relationships. Discussion of the results is followed by implications for teaching surface area to volume in the science classroom.

Feathers to Fish Gills: how students understand surface area to volume relationships Presentation