42 research outputs found
Design and non-design labs: Does transfer occur
Abstract. This paper is the second in the series of three describing a controlled study "Transfer of scientific abilities". The study was conducted in a large-enrollment introductory physics course taught via Investigative Science Learning Environment. Its goal was to fmd whether designing their own experiments in labs affects students' approaches to experimental problem solving in new areas of physics and in biology, and their learning of physics concepts. This paper reports on the part of the study that assesses student work while solving an experimental problem in a physics content area not studied in class. For a quantitative evaluation of students' abilities, we used scientific abilities rubrics. We studied the students' lab reports and answers to non-traditional exam problems related to the lab. We evaluated their performance and compared it with the performance of a control group that had the same course but enrolled in nondesign labs instead of design labs. The project was supported by NSF grant DRL 0241078
Pre-Service Physics Teachers and Physics Education Research.
Training pre-service teachers requires, among other things, content knowledge, pedagogical skills and pedagogical content knowledge. Teacher preparation programs have little, if any spare time to add more courses/activities to their program. However, I argue in this paper that we, as educators, must enhance the amount of physics education research in our pre-service physics teacher training programs. In this study, I analyze the results of two different types of exposure to physics education research (PER) from two different groups of pre-service physics teachers in our masters of arts and teaching program. The preliminary results show, for example that the PER helped the pre-service teachers increase their understanding of student thought processes while they solved problems. Physics teachers must have this type of ability to be successful in the classroom
Physics Champions Among White Women and People of Color.
If a person were to observe my classroom when I taught high school physics, he or she would find the traditional labs with the lectures, notes, and problems to solve that enhanced understanding. As I became more skilled in my profession, I promoted inquiry and critical thinking skills. However, the necessity was never obvious to me, nor was I ever taught how, to address social inequity in physics (let alone did I fully understand it myself). Why was that? My job was to teach concepts such as momentum, forces, inertia, circuits, etc. This list goes on and on. It wasnât until years later in my career that I began to understand the importance of bringing social inequities in physics to the front of the classroom. It started to become obvious I needed to do something at least in my own classroom when I had difficulties highlighting anyone in physics who was not White and not male. Though this was never my intent while teaching, I believe I helped maintain this social inequity, and perpetuate the idea that physics is for White males (and yes, I am a White male teacher). This article provides arguments and resources for teaching explicitly about equity issues in introductory physics
Using Eye-Trackers to Study Student Attention in Physical Science Classes.
Physics education researchers have had a strong impact on how professors teach physics and physical science courses. Faculty can find an instructional strategy to match their personal philosophies, yet how do students pay attention in those classes? There is the old belief that you have your studentsâ attention for the first 15 minutes of class but after that their attention declines. Researchers have studied student attention in the past but have not used an eye-tracker to truly capture what students look at during class. This study is the first to introduce eye-trackers to investigate student attention in a lecture or more accurately a large group instruction environment. I conducted this study in the fall and the spring semester of a physical science course. One student in each class wore an eye-tracker. I found that the first 15 minute adage is not necessarily true. Over the course of an entire class students have the ability to stay on-task fairly consistently
Gaze scribing in physics problem solving.
Eye-tracking has been widely used for research purposes in fields such as linguistics and marketing. However, there are many possibilities of how eye-trackers could be used in other disciplines like physics. A part of physics education research deals with the differences between novices and experts, specifically how each group solves problems. Though there has been a great deal of research about these differences there has been no research that focuses on noticing exactly where experts and novices look while solving the problems. Thus, to complement the past research, I have created a new technique called gaze scribing. Subjects wear a head mounted eye-tracker while solving electrical circuit problems on a graphics monitor. I monitor both scan patterns of the subjects and combine that with videotapes of their work while solving the problems. This new technique has yielded new information and elaborated on previous studies
Impulse-Momentum Diagrams.
Multiple representations are a valuable tool to help students learn and understand physics concepts.1 Furthermore, representations help students learn how to think and act like real scientists.2 These representations include: pictures, freeâbody diagrams,3 energy bar charts,4 electrical circuits, and, more recently, computer simulations and animations.5 However, instructors have limited choices when they want to help their students understand impulse and momentum. One of the only available options is the impulseâmomentum bar chart.6 The bar charts can effectively show the magnitude of the momentum as well as help students understand conservation of momentum, but they do not easily show the actual direction. This paper highlights a new representation instructors can use to help their students with momentum and impulseâthe impulseâmomentum diagram (IMD)