UE2: Understanding models

My impression is that a bird's-eye view of the UE2 course over the past several days would show the teachers negotiating and coming to consensus about what 'model' means.  This started on the first day of class, which ended with a Paige Keeley probe entitled "What is a model?"  The teachers answered the questions, received Paige's answers, then left for the afternoon.  The next morning they discussed as a group.  Throughout day 2, I felt discouraged by what felt like a lack of deep substance to their conversations -- it seemed like they were not differentiating "mental models" (a learning tool) from what Hunter has labeled "pedagogical props" (teaching tools).  But yesterday, it sounds like they ended the day with conviction and enthusiasm, having developed their own mental model for temperature.

I'd love to watch this unfold, to figure out what might have 'kept them from' understanding what kind of model Eleanor was encouraging them to develop and then to see what happened yesterday that precipitated a sequence of events that ended in understanding.  This morning, I did watch a group discussion from the morning of day 2, when the teachers were describing their responses to the Keeley probe. 

I'm not going to clip an episode because I'm still not sure this is something I want to formally pursue, but as a note to future readers, you can find the discussion I describe in minutes 49.42-1.05.54 in the video labeled UE2 120627 1056 T2.  Basically, I see (and infer) the following things to be happening:

• Wendy says that she carefully read and understood Paige's prompt to be asking about which of the choices addressed the use of models, not just models.  So even if she thought one of the choices was about models, if they weren't models-in-use, she didn't choose it.
  
• Hunter tells the story of making a cell cake and how constructing the cell cake didn't teach him anything.
  
• Tim wonders whether building a model is using it, in a way, since the act of representing something requires having a picture in your mind of the thing.
  
• Joan adds that in order for something to be a model, it needs to be a replica of the thing it represents.  So building a paper airplane is not a model, since it doesn't include an assembly line (which is an important part of the process of building an airplane).
  
• Jeff expresses his frustration that the conversation that's being had is way off-point of his understanding of what a model is.  He uses the word "semantics."  When Eleanor asks him what he thinks is the meaning of the probe, I think his answer suggests that he thinks the point of the probe is to help him (them) better understand what a model is, and I think he's frustrated because it didn't help him and actually left him feeling confused because he's trying to guess what Paige means.
  
• Tim reminds Jeff that he wrote a definition for 'model' that Tim liked, and Jeff says that he did it because he thought he needed to in order to answer the question.  He reiterates his frustration that he thinks that people in the room -- Wendy, for example -- understand what a model is but got caught up in the "semantics" when answering the question.  Wendy affirms that she was affected by the words and adds that her attention to words was augmented by her confusion about her experience with the mouse trap car question, when there were two different ways of interpreting the question.  (My sense is that she's still confused about what those two ways are -- that this has not been resolved for her -- so now she's being extra careful to answer the question that was asked, not trusting her interpretation.)
  
• Eleanor invites Jeff to share his working definition of a model, and he does: "models are used or useful in explaining-slash-predicting phenomena in real life in a simple or more accessible way, accessible meaning visual, whatever."  He says he used that definition when he answered the Keeley probe. 
  
• Adria and Jeff exchange some about which ones Jeff picked, and he explains that Wendy and he had a discussion in which they felt they were clear on what a model is and then they had trouble answering the Keeley probe.
  
• Sherry says that she thinks a model is "something that's built to replicate the real thing because you're not able to see and use the real thing."  She was thinking a physical model, but then this conversation/reading the probe made her think that maybe it includes conceptual things.  She thinks it's less about the answers and more about the learning.  Jeff agrees, but that's not how it worked for him.  Eleanor agrees with Sherry that it's not about the right answers; the probes are intended to be conversation starters.  Jeff says that although he agrees that we should value the process, the first thing that his table did was compare their answers to the 'right' ones.
  
• Barb (?) says her definition did allow her to answer the probe straightforwardly.
  
• Alicia says that she has a problem with just visualizing models, (I think) because there's no way for others to evaluate or assess it.  You need to be able to demonstrate it with a drawing or in words.  How can you prove you have a model, or that it's right, if it's just in your head?  Tim concurs, adding that the model can be in your head, but you have to be able to represent it for state tests.  Michelle (playfully?) disputes this, referring to the standards, saying they only say "create," not write it down.
  
• Eleanor summarizes the different kinds of models they've been discussing.

Originally, I thought this interchange was significant because I read a paper in graduate school about different ways in which students and teachers use the word "model," and I was thinking that maybe this was the source of Jeff's frustration -- the other teachers were using the word "model" in a different way than he was, and he thought it meant the task wasn't clear.  Now I'm not so sure that this is what happened.

In any case, I do get the sense that Jeff feels that this activity did not advance his understanding of what a model is, which is what he thought the purpose was.  And I wonder if this (paired with other things) might have been one of the hang-ups on day 2 in terms of understanding what 'model' means.