119
July 13–17, 2013
Wednesday afternoon
Session FC: Pre-college PER
Location: Salon Ballroom I/II
Sponsor: Committee on Research in Physics Education
Co-Sponsor: Committee on Physics in High Schools
Date: Wednesday, July 17
Time: 12:30–2:30 p.m.
Presider: Dan Crowe
FC01:
12:30-1 p.m. Teaching and Learning of Physics in
Grades 5-8*
Invited – David E. Meltzer, Arizona State University, 7271 E. Sonoran Arroyo
Mall, Mesa, AZ 85212;
For the past five years I have taught regular weekly science classes to
students in grades 5-8. This has allowed me to follow the development
of many students over periods of years. I have used modified versions of
various research-based college-level curricula, and have developed my own
materials. Assessment materials included items from state-mandated tests,
from standard instruments such as the CSEM, and from other sources.
I will focus discussion on several themes: (1) there is great potential for
significant physics learning at the middle-school level, but (2) the time
and effort required to achieve such outcomes are enormous and perhaps
underappreciated; at the same time (3) there are grounds for skepticism
regarding the appropriateness of many common grade-level standards and
expectations, and (4) assessment of learning by middle-school students
must take into account a very substantial decay rate in student learning
gains over time, a point emphasized by Piaget.
*Supported in part by a grant from Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State
University.
FC02:
1-1:30 p.m. Middle School Student Achievement
Correlates with Teachers’ Knowledge of Energy*
Invited – Michael C. Wittmann, University of Maine, 5709 Bennett Hall,
Orono, ME 04469-5709;
Levi Lucy, University of Maine
In the Maine Physical Sciences Partnership we are studying teachers’ think-
ing about energy as well as what teachers know about their students’ ideas
about energy. Before and after all instruction on energy, students answered
a validated survey constructed primarily of questions from the AAAS As-
sessment database. Teachers took the same survey, answering the questions
and predicting the answers their students would give. In two instances, dif-
ferences in teacher responses are correlated with student achievement on
those questions. Teachers with the most detailed content responses on one
question as well teachers with the most complete understanding of com-
mon incorrect answers on another question had students with the highest
gains on each of those questions. We discuss the design or our survey, our
data, and how we analyzed the results.
*This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation
under Grant #0962805.
FC03:
1:30-1:40 p.m. Adapting a Novel Curriculum in a
Traditional High School Environment
Contributed – Emily A. Knapp, University of Colorado, Boulder, 1435 Willow-
brook Drive, Longmont, CO 80504;
Valerie K. Otero, University of Colorado, Boulder
Adopting novel curricula is difficult in high schools that have strict pacing
criteria and standards set forth by the district for general physics classes.
In order to adapt a PER-based approach to teaching physics, we alternated
novel and traditional classroom structures to capture the essence and
pedagogy of an innovative curriculum while still maintaining compliance
with district policies. This study investigates how students responded to
the alternating implementations of Physics and Everyday Thinking; an
innovative curriculum based on the inductive method. The curriculum
involves student-centered investigation, group discussions, collecting
and interpreting evidence, and generating inferences and principles from
observations. Findings include students’ trust in their own investigations
and data, students’ views on working in research groups, and the impact
of decentralized authority in the classroom. These findings and lessons
learned from adapting a novel curricular approach in a traditional environ-
ment will be discussed.
FC04:
1:40-1:50 p.m. Effects of Flexibility on Homework
Completion and Student Performance
Contributed – Alisa P. Grimes, University of Colorado, Boulder, 249 UCB,
Boulder, CO 80309;
Research has shown that student choice and flexibility in the learning
environment are linked to motivation and agency. This education research
investigates the effect of choice and flexibility in impacting homework
completion rate. Two different classroom treatments were applied over
two terms of an urban high school chemistry course. The first treatment
involved flexible, supportive classroom structures that theoretically would
lead to a greater homework completion rate. The second treatment (or
control) involved the traditional, authoritative structures that had been in
place--students were penalized for not completing homework within the
designated timeframe. Initial results suggest that the flexible supportive
structures led to greater homework completion rates and to higher perfor-
mances on the district assessment over the non-flexible homework condi-
tion. These results will be discussed along with instructional implications,
explanatory conjectures, and lessons learned.
FC05:
1:50-2 p.m. Effective Ways of Using Interactive
Whiteboards in a Physics Classroom
Contributed – Bor Gregorcic, Univeristy of Ljubljana, Faculty for Mathematics
and Physics, Ljubljana, 1000 Slovenia;
Eugenia Etkina, Rutgers University
Gorazd Planinsic, Univeristy of Ljubljana
This talk will discus how Interactive Whiteboards are used in a high school
physics class. While IWB use has already been studied from a general
perspective, few studies have addressed the specifics of their use for teach-
ing physics. We investigate effective ways of using IWB in instruction and
in curriculum design. The framework for our study is based on the Design
Based Research approach. A unit is designed, implemented, evaluated,
redesigned and used in class again. As the cycle is repeated, the result is an
improved unit and emergence of principles for IWB use and curriculum
material design. We put special emphasis on using the interactive surface
of the board, as this is one of the main advantages of the IWB over a
standard computer-projector setup. The surface, when used in combination
with dynamic interaction software (Algodoo, for example) makes possible
a creative graphical and kinesthetic input from the students.
FC06:
2-2:10 p.m. Mechanistic Reasoning in an Informal
Physics Program
Contributed – Rosemary Wulf, University of Colorado, Boulder, 440 UCB,
Boulder, CO 80309;
Kathleen Hinko, Noah Finkelstein, University of Colorado, Boulder
Informal science education has the potential to help students engage in ac-
tive learning in physics. Providing students with the chance to experiment
and to have students externalize their reasoning to explain their experi-
ments, rather than being told a correct answer, will help students to take on
the role of an active learner in science. Building on prior efforts in studying
and promoting mechanistic reasoning,
1
we apply a modified coding
scheme to examine mechanistic reasoning in middle school students’ sci-
entific notebooks in an informal setting. We compare students’ mechanistic
reasoning in two inquiry physics curricula, one that is very guided and the
other that is more open inquiry. We find that students in the more open
inquiry-oriented curriculum use more varied types of mechanistic reason-
ing. We discuss the role that such active expert learning and reasoning may
play in the promotion of children’s positive scientific identities.
1. R.S. Russ, R.E. Scherr, D. Hammer, D. and J. Mikeska, Recognizing mechanistic
reasoning in student scientific inquiry: A framework for discourse analysis developed
from philosophy of science.
Sci. Ed.
92
, 499-525. (2008).
