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Register a new userInfluencing Student Relationships With Physics Through Culturally Relevant Tools
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This study investigates how an urban, high school physics class responded to the inclusion of a classroom set of iPads and associated applications, such as screencasting. The participatory roles of students and the expressions of their relationships to physics were examined. Findings suggest that iPad technology altered classroom norms and student relationships to include increased student agency and use of evidence. Findings also suggest that the iPad provided a connection between physics, social status, and play. Videos, observations, interviews, and survey responses were analyzed to provide insight into the nature of these changes.
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Students who serve as Learning Assistants (LAs) and have the opportunity to teach the content they are learning, while also studying effective teaching pedagogy, have demonstrated achievement gains in advanced content courses and positive shifts in attitudes about learning science [V. Otero, S. Pollock & N. Finkelstein, Amer J Physics 78, 11 (2010)]. Although the LA experience is also valuable for high school students, the tight schedule and credit requirements of advanced high school students limit opportunities for implementing traditional LA programs at the high school level. In order to provide high school physics students with an LA-like experience, iPads were used as tools for students to synthesize screencast video tutorials for students to access, review and evaluate. The iPads were utilized in a one-to-one tablet-to-student environment throughout the course of an entire school year. This research investigates the impact of a one-to-one iPad environment and the use of iPads to create teaching-to-learn (TtL) experiences on student agency and attitudes toward learning science. Project funded by NSF grant # DUE 934921.
Covariational reasoning -- reasoning about how changes in one quantity relate to changes in another quantity -- has been examined extensively in mathematics education research. Little research has been done, however, on covariational reasoning in introductory physics contexts. We explore one aspect of covariational reasoning: ``goes like reasoning. ``Goes like reasoning refers to ways physicists relate two quantities through a simplified function. For example, physicists often say that ``the electric field goes like one over r squared. While this reasoning mode is used regularly by physicists and physics instructors, how students make sense of and use it remains unclear. We present evidence from reasoning inventory items which indicate that many students are sense making with tools from prior math instruction, that could be developed into expert ``goes like thinking with direct instruction. Recommendations for further work in characterizing student sense making as a foundation for future development of instruction are made.
Physics education research has used quantitative modeling techniques to explore learning, affect, and other aspects of physics education. However, these studies have rarely examined the predictive output of the models, instead focusing on the inferences or causal relationships observed in various data sets. This research introduces a modern predictive modeling approach to the PER community using transcript data for students declaring physics majors at Michigan State University (MSU). Using a machine learning model, this analysis demonstrates that students who switch from a physics degree program to an engineering degree program do not take the third semester course in thermodynamics and modern physics, and may take engineering courses while registered as a physics major. Performance in introductory physics and calculus courses, measured by grade as well as a students declared gender and ethnicity play a much smaller role relative to the other features included the model. These results are used to compare traditional statistical analysis to a more modern modeling approach.
We report results from a study designed to identify links between undergraduate students views about experimental physics and their engagement in multiweek projects in lab courses. Using surveys and interviews, we explored whether students perceived particular classroom activities to be features of experimental physics practice. We focused on 18 activities, including maintaining lab notebooks, fabricating parts, and asking others for help. Interviewees identified activities related to project execution as intrinsic to experimental physics practice based on high prevalence of those activities in interviewees own projects. Fabrication-oriented activities were identified as conditional features of experimentation based on differences between projects, which interviewees attributed to variations in project resources. Interpersonal activities were also viewed as conditional features of experimentation, dependent upon ones status as novice or expert. Our findings suggest that students views about experimental physics are shaped by firsthand experiences of their own projects and secondhand experiences of those of others.
While laboratory instruction is a cornerstone of physics education, the impact of student behaviours in labs on retention, persistence in the field, and the formation of students physics identity remains an open question. In this study, we performed in-lab observations of student actions over two semesters in two pedagogically different sections of the same introductory physics course. We used a cluster analysis to identify different categories of student behaviour and analyzed how they correlate with lab structure and gender. We find that, in lab structures which fostered collaborative group work and promoted decision making, there was a task division along gender lines with respect to laptop and equipment usage (and found no such divide among students in guided verification labs).
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