Carlson Coogler

Professional Title
Research Assistant
Organization/Institution
University of Alabama (UA)
About Me (Bio)
Carlson H. Coogler is a doctoral student in The University of Alabama’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction where she studies science and literature education. Currently, she is a research assistant under Dr. Jonathan Shemwell on the “AiMS” project, which develops secondary science practitioners’ understanding of the affordances of abstract modeling for teaching challenging science topics. Her research interests focus on the liminal places where science and language interact: in particular, how science teachers use language to instruct and to interpret scientific mastery; how discursive agents metaphorize science to either deny or assert its authority, especially within the post-truth era; and what the study and practice of literature can offer to science education. Carlson is a graduate of Samford University where she earned an MSE in English Language Arts and a University Fellows honors BA in English with a minor in biology.

Research on the Utility of Abstraction as a Guiding Principle for Learning about the Nature of Models in Science Education

University of Georgia (UGA)
05/15/2017

This project will develop a short instructional sequence and new student learning assessments that are implemented in earth science classes. The findings will help the field to understand whether the process of abstracting from multiple phenomena during model construction supports students' understanding of scientific models in relation to earth science ideas and the cross-cutting concept of scale.