Model-centered instruction moves beyond the traditional classroom use of models. Science teachers often use three-dimensional replicas, drawings, and diagrams to concretize abstract concepts, to simplify complicated structures and processes, and to depict connections between interrelated items. To use models only to illustrate instruction, however, is to deny students the opportunity to see how models facilitate scientific inquiry.
Scientists routinely use models to depict, test, and refine their ideas.
By teaching students to use models not just as learning aids but as explanatory and reasoning tools, model-centered instruction can promote qualitative understanding of science concepts and, equally important, foster scientific thinking. The integral component of MARS instruction is a set of interactive computer programs that enable students to view and manipulate visible models of abstract concepts. Hands-on and written activities augment the software by embodying a concept or set of concepts that students explore at the computer. In a unit on weight, for example, students compare the masses of several objects and then record and test predictions about what happens when each object is suspended from a spring. An accompanying computer task portrays a similar situation.