Representational competence is a target of novel learning environments given the assumption that improved representational competence improves learning in science. There exists little evidence, however, that improving representational competence is positively correlated with learning outcomes across science disciplines. In this report, we argue that the previously reported weak relationships between representational competence and science learning outcomes have resulted from designs that do not explicitly analyze the discipline‐specific skills related to the representational competence construct. Here, we demonstrate through a detailed analysis of students' representation use that at least two demonstrated skills comprising representational competence (e.g., construction and selection) are not strongly related to improved conceptual understanding in the domain. We discuss the implications of these results for the design of future learning environments that aim to improve learning through improved representational competence.

中文翻译：

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素描而非代表性的能力预示着科学学习的提高

假设提高的代表性能力可以改善科学学习，那么代表性能力是新型学习环境的目标。但是，几乎没有证据表明，提高代表性能力与跨科学学科的学习成果呈正相关。在本报告中，我们认为，先前报道的代表性能力与科学学习成果之间的弱关系是由于设计未明确分析与代表性能力构建相关的特定学科技能而导致的。在这里，我们通过对学生的表象表达方式的详细分析来证明，至少两种证明的技能包括表象能力（例如，构造和选择）与领域中概念理解的提高没有强烈关系。我们讨论了这些结果对未来学习环境设计的意义，这些环境旨在通过提高代表性能力来改善学习。