As part of ATLAST’s work on student opportunity-to-learn measures, the project developed concept development maps. The maps specify hypothetical relationships among data, phenomena, and ideas; providing guidance for understanding of an idea might develop over a sequence of lessons or activities. The maps make use of a particularly terminology, including the following:
- Phenomena: naturally occurring events (not an instructional activity; not necessarily observable; not
data) - Primary phenomena: phenomena described in the sub-idea (e.g., plates split and join; plants make
their own food…) - Evidentiary phenomena: phenomena that provide evidence for the primary phenomena (e.g., bubbles appear on the leaves of a plant submerged in water, providing evidence that plants produce oxygen during photosynthesis)
- Scientific principle: something a teacher just tells the student (or the student reads); something for which there are no accessible primary or evidentiary phenomena.
- Representation: a way of representing a phenomenon; could be a demonstration or model or analogy (a representation is not the phenomenon itself)
- Data: information that has not yet been analyzed or processed; typically gathered through observation or measurement.
The maps may be accessed by clicking on the links below:
Flow of Matter and Energy
Force and Motion
Plate Tectonics