Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2022
Volume 67, Number 6
Saturday–Tuesday, April 9–12, 2022; New York
Session W06: Physics Education Research: Teaching and Learning at Undergraduate LevelEducation Recordings Available
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Sponsoring Units: GPER Chair: Mila Kryjevskaia, North Dakota State University Room: Marquis A-B |
Monday, April 11, 2022 5:45PM - 5:57PM |
W06.00001: Supporting students in reasoning consistently MacKenzie R Stetzer, Thomas M Fittswood, Drew J Rosen An emerging body of research suggests that the nature of human reasoning itself may impact student performance on physics questions. Analysis of student reasoning patterns through the lens of dual-process theories of reasoning (DPToR) indicates that students may struggle to engage analytical processing productively when responding to physics questions containing salient distracting features (SDFs). While students may reason correctly on one question (screening question), they may abandon that same line of reasoning on an analogous question containing an SDF (target question). As part of a larger effort to investigate and support student reasoning in physics, we have designed and tested interventions that explicitly guide students to apply the reasoning they successfully used on the screening question to the target question so that they may reconsider their initial responses. In this talk, intervention results will be presented and implications for research-based curriculum development will be discussed. |
Monday, April 11, 2022 5:57PM - 6:09PM |
W06.00002: Developing Question Sequences to Identify and Remedy Student Reasoning Inconsistencies Kristin Kellar, Paula R Heron Dual process theories of reasoning suggest that humans reason using System 1 (heuristic) and System 2 (analytic) thinking processes. The aim of this research is to develop question sequences that serve two purposes: 1) to identify physics students with relevant content knowledge who nevertheless relied on System 1 thinking on a “target” question, and 2) to help students recognize reasoning inconsistencies and activate System 2 thinking effectively to override initial incorrect responses. Screening and target questions are used to identify students making reasoning errors, and intervention questions are designed to alert students of the need to reevaluate their reasoning. Students then have an opportunity to re-answer the target question. The cognitive reflection test (1) (CRT) is often used to assess the propensity for cognitive reflection, and we will present comparisons of student scores on the CRT and their responses to our questions. Data from recent iterations in calculus-based physics courses at the University of Washington will be discussed. |
Monday, April 11, 2022 6:09PM - 6:21PM |
W06.00003: Screening for understanding: Using Dual-Process theories to guide the design of research tasks Beth A Lindsey, Megan L Nagel, MacKenzie R Stetzer Researchers in Physics Education have recently been applying dual-process theories of reasoning and decision-making (DPToR) as a guide to inform the development of research-based instructional materials. This approach is particularly well-suited for tasks and topics for which a strong incorrect intuitive model interferes with a student's ability to successfully apply their conceptual understanding. In this talk, we will describe a multi-institutional interdiscipinary research project designed to identify topics and questions in the introductory physics and chemistry curricula for which we expect that an intervention approach rooted in DPToR would help students to improve their reasoning. This talk will focus on the selection of tasks and the development and validation of screening questions that can be used to identify which students are able to demonstrate the appropriate conceptual understanding on some questions but may be hindered from success on other questions due to underlying cognitive factors. We will illustrate our approach with results from a task on the ideal gas law. |
Monday, April 11, 2022 6:21PM - 6:33PM |
W06.00004: What affective domains can teach us about student reasoning Drew J Rosen, MacKenzie R Stetzer, Mila Kryjevskaia, Beth A Lindsey A growing body of research has revealed that physics students may answer certain physics questions incorrectly even though they have demonstrated their ability to reason successfully on analogous questions. To better understand this phenomenon, researchers are increasingly using dual-process theories of reasoning (DPToR) as a theoretical lens to explain and predict student reasoning patterns on such physics tasks. While much of the work to date on student reasoning has focused on cognitive and metacognitive domains, relatively little has been done to study the impact of affective domains on reasoning patterns via the DPToR framework. Factors such as self-efficacy and self-regulation through metacognition have previously been linked to student reasoning and have often been predictors of future task success and persistence. According to DPToR, these affective factors may impact student reasoning at many different points in the reasoning cycle. As part of a multi-institutional project, we are developing a survey that probes these affective factors in order to gain greater insight into student reasoning patterns. In this talk, we present preliminary findings from a pilot study and discuss the potential of this work to inform future research-based curriculum development efforts. |
Monday, April 11, 2022 6:33PM - 6:45PM |
W06.00005: How do labs impact students' critical thinking skills and experimentation views? Natasha G Holmes, Heather J Lewandowski, Cole J Walsh Instructional labs are fundamental to an undergraduate physics curriculum, but their possible learning goals are vast and with limited evidence to support any particular goal. In this talk, I will describe a study evaluating the efficacy of labs with different goals and structures on students' critical thinking skills and views about experimentation, using an extensive database of survey responses from over 20,000 students at over 100 institutions. We find that labs focused on developing experimentation skills improve students' critical thinking skills and experimentation views compared to labs focused on reinforcing lecture concepts - a pattern that is consistent for all demographic groups. Our analysis also shows that activities to support students' decision-making and communication explain over half and a third of the effect of skills-based labs on students' critical thinking skills and experimentation views, respectively, while modeling activities have only a small effect on performance. |
Monday, April 11, 2022 6:45PM - 6:57PM |
W06.00006: Student reasoning about experimental measurement uncertainty in quantum versus classical mechanics, and deterministic versus probabilistic systems. Andy Schang, Natasha G Holmes, Emily M Stump, Gina Passante Recent studies on how students think about uncertainty in the context of quantum versus classical mechanics have suggested that students express varied perceptions of uncertainty depending on context. We developed a new survey to study student thinking about fictitious data distributions from both quantum and classical, and both deterministic and probabilistic laboratory experiments. To analyze these interpretations we asked students to explain how and why the distributions might change if 100 more students or a professional experimenter had performed the experiment and developed a coding scheme to classify their responses. In this presentation, I will describe the emerging results about the ways in which student thinking about measurement uncertainty varies between classical and quantum, and between deterministic and probabilistic measurement contexts. |
Monday, April 11, 2022 6:57PM - 7:09PM |
W06.00007: Resources for understanding instruction: Identifying Learning Assistants' ideas about student assets and instructor roles Anne T Alesandrini, Lisa M Goodhew, Rachel E Scherr The practice of noticing, understanding, and building on student ideas is thought to be beneficial in several research-based teaching strategies, including responsive teaching and resource-oriented instruction. Nonetheless, attending to student thinking and viewing student ideas as instructional assets can be a challenge for novice instructors. |
Monday, April 11, 2022 7:09PM - 7:21PM |
W06.00008: Following Change: Physics Faculty Attitudes as they Move Towards Active and Collaborative Learning Phoebe K McClincy, Jessica Rosenberg, Jill Nelson, Sarah Ochs While the benefits of evidence-based teaching practices for student learning, engagement, and persistence are well documented, adoption of such practices in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses is slow. We present a study of the perceptions of physics faculty as they engage in efforts to transform teaching towards active and collaborative learning (ACL) in high-traffic introductory courses. This is an effort that is taking place in physics, mathematics, and computer science. In this presentation we focus on the effort in the calculus-based introductory physics sequence. We investigate physics instructors' perception of the purpose and value of evidence-based teaching practices and participation in collaborative course coordination and revision efforts. While the movement to online instruction was a barrier for some instructors, Spring 2021 interviews revealed that overall, participating instructors were proponents of ACL. Indeed, some instructors had been using ACL strategies to varying degrees in their courses, even before our change efforts began. We will follow this change by discussing faculty interviews from early 2022. |
Monday, April 11, 2022 7:21PM - 7:33PM |
W06.00009: Instructor interactions in traditional and non-traditional labs David Wu, Meagan Sundstrom, Ashley B Heim, Cole J Walsh, Natasha G Holmes As physics laboratory courses (labs) transition from traditional, model-verifying to reformed, discovery-based investigations, it becomes crucial to understand the role of the instructor within various lab types. In this talk, I describe a new approach to examining student-instructor interactions using tools from social network analysis, which we used to efficiently compare interactions of five different lab sections belonging to three different lab courses. We find that reformed labs have higher levels of student-instructor interaction compared to traditional labs. Furthermore, the duration of student-instructor interactions between labs of the same type is comparable despite different instructors and students, suggesting the level of interaction within a lab session is more dependent on the structure of the lab rather than an instructor's implementation of the pedagogy. This work is a preliminary step toward understanding the extent to which student-instructor interactions support the improved outcomes observed in reformed, discovery-based labs compared with traditional labs. |
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