Context affects all.
Reasoning, representing
​changes with a word.

How does context influence.......

​... student narratives about evolution by natural selection?

​Students’ explanations of evolution by natural selection show that student reasoning is inconsistent when presented with seemingly similar assessments.  Their performance differs when asked conceptually equivalent questions that differ in the context. 

​Considering that, I try to quantify how taxon (human vs. non-human animal) and the type of trait (structural vs. functional) influence students’ reasoning about evolution by natural selection.

​Here context is defined as the words in the question prompt.

... students’ model- based explanations?

​​Scientific models are specialised representations of a concept, process or phenomenon, with the purpose of helping illustrate, explain, or predict. As a tool, models lend themselves to both instruction and assessment.

I want to ask questions about the effect of context on the content and architecture of  student-generated models.

​​​Here context is defined as the words in the question prompt.

... students’ representation of their understanding of natural selection?

While narratives are a frequently used tool to elicit students' understanding of scientific concepts, they are not the mode by which students can represent their reasoning. 

I am trying to understand the influence of mode of response (i.e. narrative v/s student-generated model) on the content and accuracy of their representations.

​​​Here context is defined as the mode by which students respond to the same question prompt.

... students' mechanistic explanations?

When constructing a mechanistic explanation about an observed phenomena, students have to consider scalar levels below the observed phenomena. This usually involves referring back to knowledge they obtained in previous classes. 

​I want to investigate if the context in which they are asked to reason about mechanisms influences the nature of their mechanistic explanations.

Here context is defined as the course and discipline (i.e. chemistry v/s biology) in which the prompt is provided to the student.