Abstract

Received 25 February 2014Received in revised form7 April 201415 April 2014Accepted 16 April 2014Purpose of this study is to analyze the roles and strategies of imagistic simulation observed in mental simulation about problematic situation of prediction, and thereby identify the process of generating prediction, explanation and sophistication. For this study, a framework for mental simulation process and strategy based on literary research was developed and content was validated from four experts of science education. This study was participated by 10 preliminary elementary school teachers, and a total of 20 cases were gathered for two thought experiment tasks based on the think-aloud method. The results were as follows: First, mental simulation process described based on the seven elements of 'perception,' 'interpretation,' 'statement of initial representation,' 'running imagistic simulation,' 'identifying result of simulation,' 'identifying alignment' and 'restatement structured representation.' The study confirmed that initial representation by interpreting related concepts and running imagistic simulation a number of times to develop explanation and prediction. Second, the study identified the use of strategies to enhance simulation such as 'zoom in,' 'partition,' 'dimensional enhancement,' 'dimensional reduction,' 'remove,' 'replace' and 'extreme case.' Running spatial transformation that uses strategy to enhance simulation contributed to discovering mechanism elements in problematic situations.

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