Representation and learning about evaporation

While there has been considerable research on children's understanding of evaporation, the representational issues entailed in this understanding have not been investigated in depth. This study explored students' engagement with evaporation phenomena through various representational modes. Primary school classroom sequences and structured interviews shortly after, and a year later, indicated significant advances in learning flowing from negotiation of meaning around particle representations. A case study of one child's learning is used to demonstrate how a molecular distribution representation can offer the possibility of significant advances in children's thinking about evaporation. The findings suggest that teacher-mediated negotiation of representational issues can support enriched student learning