Framework of goals for writing in physics lab classes
FFramework of goals for writing in physics lab classes
Jessica R. Hoehn ∗ and H. J. Lewandowski Department of Physics, University of Colorado, 390 UCB, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA andJILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA
Writing is an integral part of the process of science. In the undergraduate physics curriculum,the most common place that students engage with scientific writing is in lab classes, typicallythrough lab notebooks, reports, and proposals. There has not been much research on why and howwe include writing in physics lab classes, and instructors may incorporate writing for a variety ofreasons. Through a broader study of multiweek projects in advanced lab classes, we have developeda framework for thinking about and understanding the role of writing in lab classes. This frameworkdefines and describes the breadth of goals for incorporating writing in lab classes, and is a tool wecan use to begin to understand why , and subsequently how , we teach scientific writing in physics.
I. INTRODUCTION
Laboratory classes are an essential element of the un-dergraduate physics curriculum; they afford opportuni-ties for students to learn lab skills such as troubleshoot-ing or modeling, learn physics content, understand howthe community of practicing physicists engages in theprocess of experimentation, and develop an identity asa physicist . As such, physics education researchersare increasingly attending to investigations and improve-ments of student learning in lab class environments.A key element of most lab classes is scientific docu-mentation and writing in the form of lab notebooks andlab reports. Writing plays a central role in the doing andlearning of science, and is identified by the Joint TaskForce on Undergraduate Physics Programs (JTUPP) asone of the skills that students need to develop in orderto be successful in a wide variety of careers upon receiv-ing a physics bachelors degree . More specifically, theAmerican Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) pub-lished a set of recommendations for the undergraduatephysics laboratory curriculum that includes “communi-cating physics” as a key learning outcome that lab classesshould attend to . Some argue that the best place toteach scientific writing skills is in lab classes, where stu-dents actually do physics . Whether it is because mostof the “doing” of science takes place in lab classes, orbecause lab classes provide the most flexibility in termsof time and content coverage, most of the writing thatphysics students encounter in their undergraduate careertakes place in lab classes.Within the realm of laboratory instruction, project-based labs are gaining traction. In a Physics Today article, Feder describes the recent trend and says that“Implementation varies, but the crosscutting aims areto motivate students and prepare them for the chang-ing needs of the modern world and workplace. Learningby doing is a common thread. In the process, studentsare to develop into team players and effective commu-nicators” (p.28). Additionally, JTUPP suggests thatstudent-designed projects in advanced lab courses havethe benefit of providing “authentic research and commu-nication experiences” ; they recommend that advanced lab courses implement some form of multiweek researchprojects in order to prepare students for 21 st centurycareers. The scientific writing associated with project-based labs may include proposals, lab notebooks, andfinal reports in the style of a journal article. An overar-ching goal of advanced project-based labs is to help stu-dents become more central members of the communityof practicing physicists , and scientific writing may serveas one element through which this goal can be achieved.Thus, the specific goals we have for writing in lab classeswill be situated within this broader context. In an ethno-graphic case study of a physics graduate student learn-ing to write a journal article in situ, Blakeslee suggeststhat a general goal for students taking up scientific writ-ing practices is to help students transition from a tradi-tional scaffolded educational environment like a lab classor guided research experience to a more independent andopen ended scenario where they are responsible for pro-ducing and disseminating knowledge . In this paper, weidentify possible goals for incorporating writing in physicslab classes, noting that advanced lab classes (especiallythose with a student-designed multiweek final project)may play a unique role in preparing students for futureresearch experiences. This is true for many aspects ofexperimental physics training, including engaging in sci-entific writing.While there is a growing body of research on teachingand learning in physics lab classes, there is little pub-lished on the specific role that writing can (or should)play in project-based labs. We begin to address thisgap by asking the following research question: Whymight instructors incorporate writing during multiweekfinal projects in advanced labs?
Once we understand thegoals for writing in project-based lab courses, we can be-gin to investigate how writing can best be implementedto achieve such goals. To that end, the purpose of thispaper is to present a framework for thinking about andunderstanding the role of writing in physics labs. We in-terviewed four advanced lab instructors and conducteda coding analysis to identify their goals for incorporat-ing writing in student-designed final projects. We thensupplemented the results of the coding analysis with com-mon ideas from the literature in order to develop a frame- a r X i v : . [ phy s i c s . e d - ph ] M a y work that identifies various reasons physics lab instruc-tors might assign writing, thus creating a framework thatis broadly applicable to physics lab classes.As a general structure or scaffolding for information, aframework can serve a variety of purposes. In physics ed-ucation research, frameworks are commonly used as toolsfor both research and teaching (e.g., ); a frameworkmay be used to: a) understand or analyze a phenomenonor topic of interest, b) inform or identify future researchquestions, c) inform pedagogical decisions or curriculardesign, or d) advance theory development in a given sub-domain. Our framework, which consists of fifteen pos-sible goals for writing in physics lab classes organizedinto five categories, has potential to serve the first threepurposes. In this paper, we present the framework, pro-viding examples from data and literature in which it isgrounded. In Section VI, we discuss the implications forresearch and teaching and call for more research in thearena of writing in physics labs. II. BACKGROUND
There is a considerable amount of literature on teach-ing writing in general, and the role of writing in sciencespecifically. However, very little of this work has beenemployed in the specific domain of physics lab classes.In this section, we provide a brief overview of the litera-ture on writing reforms and how they have been realizedin science (Section II A), and then we outline a few spe-cific approaches to writing in lab classes in physics orother related fields (Section II B).
A. Approaches to teaching writing
Writing across the curriculum (WAC), also sometimesreferred to as writing in the disciplines (WID), is a move-ment within composition studies that took hold in theUS in the early 20 th century and by the 1970s was be-ginning to be common across higher education institu-tions . The goal of the WAC movement was to dis-tribute writing instruction across the entire undergradu-ate curriculum, implementing writing within each disci-pline rather than relegating it to only english, composi-tion, or literature courses. This was a response, in part,to “the recognition that different disciplines are charac-terized by distinct ways of writing and knowing” .Many universities have centralized writing centers thatserve as the focal point for writing on campus, providingresources to individual departments implementing writ-ing in some way . As such, today it is common place forstudents to encounter some form of writing in many oftheir courses, regardless of major or discipline. However,the extent to which writing has been implemented in thedisciplines has varied. Lerner suggests that in sciencecourses, writing has often been implemented in superfi-cial ways, focusing on grammar and formatting rather than the deeper more fundamental writing skills like ar-gument construction or organization of ideas . This lack-luster implementation also goes the other way around—in the context of first year writing courses that focusspecifically on science or scientific writing, Moskovitz andKellogg argue for the inclusion of “primary science com-munication” (i.e., journal articles) because learning towrite scientifically should involve reading actual scien-tific writing .Within the literature on writing, there are differentparadigms or views of the nature of writing. Perhaps themost salient and intuitive approach for physicists andphysics educators is the idea of writing as communica-tion. Communication is fundamental to the creation andadvancement of scientific knowledge, and writing is theprimary medium through which that takes place. Weneed to communicate our theories, models, results, andconclusions clearly and effectively to other scientists aswell as the general public. The idea of writing as commu-nication foregrounds the final product of a given piece ofwriting, which serves to demonstrate what the scientist(or science student) knows, or what they accomplished.In contrast, a Writing to learn (WTL) approach fo-cuses on the process of writing as a tool for thinkingand learning. Many composition scholars suggest thattoo much emphasis is placed on writing as communica-tion and not enough on “writing as articulation” or“thinking on paper” . Writing is a messy and itera-tive process that can be used to construct knowledgeor understanding, clarify ideas, generate a personal re-sponse to a phenomenon or subject, figure out solutionsto complex problems, construct and critique arguments,synthesize ideas, or reflect on your own knowledge .Rather than viewing writing as packaging for already for-mulated ideas, the WTL approach emphasizes the actof formulating those ideas. Bean suggests that part ofteaching students about this process of writing meansteaching them to revise, and that the process of revi-sion takes writing from being “writer-based” (the stagewhen a writer is clarifying meaning for themselves) tobeing reader-based (when the writer is focused on clarityfor the audience) . The WTL approach has been inte-grated into STEM classes through writing assignmentsthat explicitly guide students through the processes ofreflection or argument construction .Shifting from a writing as communication to WTL ap-proach is akin to shifting from a “knowledge telling” to“knowledge generating” epistemology . That is, thesedifferent approaches to writing are fundamentally con-nected to different views about the nature of knowledge.A view of knowledge as discrete pieces of information tobe studied or memorized lends to a view of writing as in-formation or demonstration of correct facts, while a viewof writing as argument and analysis is aligned with aview of knowledge as dialogic, contingent, ambiguous, ortentative . This matters because the way we, as teach-ers, view writing impacts how we implement it in ourclasses and thus how students come to view writing .Composition scholars suggest that students’ prose willbe cognitively immature if they see knowledge as sim-ply acquisition of correct information . However, thisdoes not mean we should abandon the idea of writing ascommunication; clear and effective communication is cru-cial for the advancement of science. Often, the writing ascommunication and WTL approaches are in tension withone another (as illustrated by the fact that most defini-tions of WTL describe it in contrast to communication),but they need not be. Bean describes writing as “both aprocess of doing critical thinking and a product commu-nicating the results of critical thinking” ; we need bothaspects, and can attend to them simultaneously.In STEM disciplines specifically, a third approach—Writing as professionalization (WAP)—has been em-ployed to emphasize the fact that writing can be a wayto master disciplinary forms of reasoning or argumen-tation, and can facilitate learning content and ways ofthinking that are specific to a discipline . The pro-cess of learning professional discourse norms and expe-riencing the central role of written communication inthe process of science can help students become morecentral members of the community of practicing physi-cists . This idea of WAP is prevalent in STEM, andspecifically in lab classes where students most often en-counter writing . The AAPT recommendations for un-dergraduate physics laboratory curricula align with theWAP approach by suggesting that students should learnto communicate “in forms authentic to the discipline,”communicate arguments using appropriate technical vo-cabulary, present data with appropriate significant fig-ures and uncertainty, and present data, ideas, or resultsin appropriately professional plots, tables, diagrams, andschematics .Moskovitz and Kellogg indicate that most recent re-forms to writing in lab classes have taken either a WAPor a WTL approach, identifying a tension between thetwo . They suggest that when writing is solely usedas a means to an end, it is “likely to be at odds with[expectations] of professional scientific discourse.” Ourinterpretation of the literature we have drawn from inthis section is that each of the three approaches towriting—Communication, WTL, and WAP—are neces-sary for writing in science, and that we can attend toall three simultaneously, perhaps emphasizing one overthe others depending on the context. These three ap-proaches form the a priori categories for our frameworkfor thinking about and understanding the role of writingin physics labs. B. Writing in labs
Most writing in the undergraduate physics curriculumtakes place in lab classes. Some form of scientific writingis often included in learning goals of lab classes at alllevels , yet there is little research documenting whyand how we incorporate writing specifically in lab classes. This paper represents an effort to begin to fill that gap,responding to calls from researchers for more attentionto writing in labs .Typically, lab classes include both formative and sum-mative types of writing in the form of lab notebooksand reports. Stanley and Lewandowski conducted in-terviews with physics graduate students about their labnotebook practices and found that most graduate stu-dents did not receive formal instruction around keepinga lab notebook in their undergraduate lab courses or fromadvisors in graduate school. Most of the study partici-pants reported eventually developing adequate lab note-book practices through informal experience in authenticresearch settings. The authors wonder if lab notebookdocumentation skills are explicit learning goals of labcourses, and if so, how these courses attempt to teachthose skills. The framework we present in this paperbroadly addresses possible goals for writing in lab classes,including documentation in lab notebooks. Some instruc-tors have explored alternative structures or formats tothe traditional lab notebook in order to teach studentsgood record-keeping habits and facilitate the logistics ofstudent-designed projects. For example, Eblen-Zayas describes the transition to using Electronic Lab Note-books (ELNs) and notes that they are particularly use-ful for instructors to track and guide student progresson multiweek projects. Students also reported that theELNs were useful for organizing their ideas and data andfacilitating collaboration. In Eblen-Zayas’ example, theELNs were graded and carried weight in the students’overall grade in order to emphasize the importance ofkeeping a lab notebook. Stanley and Lewandowski pro-vide additional recommendations for instruction aroundlab notebooks including having flexibility around the for-mat and structure of notebook entries, clearly conveyingto students that they should attend to context , audience ,and purpose in their notebook entries, and designing labactivities such that students have to rely on their own(or others’) notebooks.In addition to lab notebooks, many physics lab classesemploy lab reports, yet, in their traditional form, lab re-ports may have limited use. Traditional lab reports areknown to be unsuccessful in promoting engagement inlearning and quality writing, prescriptive of an artificialscientific process and information flow, time consumingto grade, and are often used by instructors without aclear purpose . Some alternative approaches to labreports have been developed in order to address theseshortcomings. The Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) is a tool that leverages the WTL approach, using theprocess of writing to help students make meaning of sci-ence content and practices. It consists of templates forinstructors to design lab activities and templates to guidestudents in their writing and thinking about the activi-ties. The SWH emphasizes the role of inquiry in sciencethrough questions that encourage “deeper thinking andunderstanding about science concepts” and that guidestudents to make claims supported by evidence. It hasbeen used in introductory chemistry labs in place of atraditional lab report, and improved students’ motiva-tion and attitudes toward science as well as their under-standing of chemistry .Another alternative to a traditional lab report is the“Letter Home” assignment where students write a let-ter (email) to a friend or family member in which theydescribe the lab activity and relay the results and inter-pretation of those results. The goal of this assignment,as it has been implemented in introductory and upper-division physics lab classes, is to give students experi-ence communicating physics to a non-physics audience,and has been documented to better promote student en-gagement and quality writing . Lastly, some sciencelab classes culminate with students writing a full scien-tific paper that mimics an authentic journal article, inan effort to help students join a professional discoursecommunity by learning how to construct an argumentsupported by evidence, and communicate it through pro-fessional style and format .As part of enculturating students into a professionaldiscourse community, some lab courses engage studentsin a peer review process around their proposals or re-ports, given that peer review is an essential element ofthe scientific process and that the act of revision is cru-cial for developing one’s writing skills . CalibratedPeer Review (CPR) is an online system designed to helpimprove students’ reading and writing skills in science,while simultaneously mitigating grading workload for in-structors . Through the CPR system, students submit awriting assignment, evaluate three calibration examples(written by the instructor to be of low, medium, and highquality), evaluate three of their peers’ assignments, thenre-read and evaluate their own writing. Students receivea “calibration score” based on how well they evaluate thethree calibration examples; the calibration scores of re-viewers serve as a weighting factor in determining the fi-nal grade of each student’s written assignment. CPR wascreated with the intention of helping students learn abouta topic or content area through writing about it (WTL),improve their writing skills, and practice critiquing oth-ers’ writing; it allows instructors to include writing as-signments in large classes without having to spend largeamounts of time grading them.While CPR has been used predominantly in large in-troductory lecture classes, there are some instances ofimplementation in lab classes. For example, Margerum et al report on an introductory chemistry lab in whichthey implemented three short WTL assignments throughthe CPR system—an essay on absorption and emissionin the hydrogen atom as an introduction to the upcominglaboratory project, a pre-lab writing assignment on back-ground information for the lab, and a post-lab formal labreport. The students in this study made progress towardmeeting the learning objectives of the project, includ-ing improvement of their technical reading and writingskills. Wise and Kim used CPR in a writing-intensivechemical engineering lab class, where students worked in groups on lab projects and then submitted individual ex-ecutive summaries to accompany their lab reports. Thestudents reported that the CPR process helped them im-prove their writing skills, as well as identify importantaspects of their experiment. To justify to students theimportance of writing an executive summary, the assign-ment began with the following statement: “Presentingyour work to managers and colleagues will be a part ofyour daily life when you go to industry, and how impor-tant it is cannot be overemphasized.” Thus, the goalsof the writing assignment were not only to improve stu-dents’ writing skills and facilitate their learning of thecontent, but also to prepare them for a realistic profes-sional writing practice. In this way, CPR can be used inlab classes to facilitate both WTL and WAP approachesto writing.Another example of peer review implementation in labclasses that foregrounds the WAP approach is the Jour-nal of the Advanced Physics Laboratory Investigation(JAUPLI), an online student journal designed to helpstudents experience an authentic double-confidential peerreview process . Students submit articles about theiradvanced lab projects, which are then reviewed by anony-mous students at other institutions and have a chance ofbeing published in the online journal. Students who par-ticipated in JAUPLI reported that it helped them under-stand the scientific peer review process, improved theirown understanding of their experiment, and improvedtheir scientific writing skills .Regardless of the format or specific details of writ-ing in lab classes, one common goal is that students en-gage in reflection, a process known to be important forlearning the content and practices of science . Theidea of reflection may be implied in the processes of ex-perimentation we teach our students, or it may be ex-plicitly included in instructions and framing to students(e.g., the SWH includes “reflection” as the last sectionof the report ). In an advanced lab course that includesopen-ended projects, Eblen-Zayas implemented separatemetacognitive activities in the form of individual writtenreflections and a corresponding class discussion . Forthe individual written reflections, students were given aseries of prompts that guided them in thinking aboutwhat they did, how they dealt with problems they en-countered, and what they plan to do moving forward.The activities were intended to normalize students’ feel-ings of frustration throughout their open-ended project,and resulted in improved student enthusiasm for, andconfidence in, doing experimental work. This literatureon approaches to writing in science, and specifically labclasses, informs our framework of goals for writing inphysics lab classes, with a special focus on upper-divisionlabs that include a multiweek final project. III. METHODSA. Data collection
The present study on the role of writing in physics labstakes place as part of a broader project on identifyingeffective practices for multiweek final projects in upper-division physics labs. In order to begin to define thebreadth of goals for incorporating writing in physics labs,we conducted an interview study with four instructors ofupper-division lab classes. That is, in order to answer ourgeneral research question about why physics lab instruc-tors might incorporate writing, we started with our fourparticipants and asked why do these instructors incorpo-rate writing? The instructors come from a variety of in-stitutional contexts: private and public, selective and in-clusive, bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree grantinginstitutions, including predominantly white, multi-racial,and Hispanic serving institutions. The four instructorswere interviewed about their approach to, and goals for,writing in lab classes as part of their participation in thebroader research project. Of the four, there are two whitewomen and two white men. The results and analysis ofthis interview study are not meant to be generalizableor representative of all physics instructors; we report de-mographic information for both the institutions and theinstructors to provide context for our work, and note thatthe framework that we have developed, based in part onthe interview study, can be applied to a wide variety ofphysics lab classes in a variety of contexts.The four instructors in our interview study were allteaching advanced lab classes for physics majors that in-clude a multiweek final project at the culmination of theterm. The projects typically consisted of students work-ing in groups to design and conduct their own experi-ment, with various amounts of scaffolding and guidanceprovided by the instructor up front and throughout theproject. Each class incorporated multiple forms of writ-ing, with all of them using lab notebooks and some ofthem including white papers, proposals, reflections, andreports. Additionally, three of the courses implementedsome version of peer review where students reviewed eachothers’ writing, responded to reviewer comments, andrevised their papers accordingly. The writing in theseclasses was a mix of individual and group assignments.The interviews were semi-structured, lasted between55 and 100 minutes, and were conducted by the first au-thor via video conference. After having each instructordescribe their course, specifically focusing on the detailsof the final project portion, the majority of the interviewcentered around the ways they incorporate writing in thefinal projects. For each type of writing assignment (e.g.,lab notebooks, final reports), we asked them: Why doyou incorporate this type of written communication dur-ing final projects? How do you frame it? What is theend goal or purpose? What role does this writing play inadvancing the project? How do you grade it?
We alsoasked them specifics about implementation (e.g.,
Is it a collaborative or individual document? In what ways dostudents get feedback on their writing? ), and concludedthe writing-related part of the interview by having themreflect on writing in the general physics curriculum andthe role they think labs do (or should) play in teachingscientific writing.
B. Data analysis
We recorded and transcribed the four interviews, andthen coded each transcript for the instructors’ goals orreasons for incorporating writing in the final projects intheir classes. The coding analysis consisted of an itera-tive process of creating, refining, and applying codes thatwould answer our research question about the instruc-tors’ goals for writing. The codes were a combinationof emergent and a priori . We began with broad cate-gories and ideas around writing present in the literature(Communication, WTL, and WAP, see Section II A) andthen identified more specific goals cited by the instruc-tors (emergent). We mapped these goals onto the broadercategories, connecting the instructors’ ideas to the a pri-ori categories from the literature. The interviews wereopen-ended and conducted before the a priori categorieswere identified, such that the interview questions did notlead the instructors to talk about writing in a certainway. Through discussions among the research team, weiteratively refined the definitions and categorization ofthe codes. The final codebook is available in the onlinesupplementary material . Because we were looking for existence of codes, and not prevalence or frequency, nointer-rater reliability was necessary for the coding anal-ysis. Instead, in Section IV below where we define anddiscuss the resulting framework, we present an example ofeach goal from the data (in the form of interview quotes),providing our argument for why each particular goal ex-ists and is distinct from other goals. C. Development of the framework
Upon developing the codebook and coding the four in-terviews, we expanded the codebook into a framework(see Fig. 1 below) based on common ideas in the lit-erature around writing in science, as well as our re-search and teaching experience in experimental physics.The resulting framework (addressing the question
Whymight instructors incorporate writing during multiweekfinal projects in advanced labs? ) is thus more generallyapplicable to physics labs, though its development wasoriginally based on an interview study with four instruc-tors (which addressed the question
Why do these instruc-tors incorporate writing during multiweek final projects inadvanced labs? ). All of the goals for writing mentionedby the four instructors in our interview study are cor-roborated by the literature. In Section IV, we describeeach element of the framework, providing an examplefrom the data and a brief discussion of where and howthat particular idea appears in the literature. There arealso a few areas of overlap and additional goals not ex-plicitly mentioned in the interviews that we included inthe framework because they are commonly discussed inthe writing in science and/or physics education litera-ture. These additions are noted in Section IV below, andindicated in the figure by an asterisk. After we createdand refined the content and structure of the framework,using the codebook as a foundation and corroboratingand supplementing with literature, we conducted a gen-eral face validity check with physics education researchersand lab instructors external to the project. Their inputled to further refinements of the labels and descriptionsof the goals (e.g., using “argumentation” instead of “per-suasiveness” and clarifying the distinction between “co-hesive narrative” and “synthesis”).
IV. FRAMEWORK
The result of this research is the framework shown inFig. 1. In this section, we define and describe eachelement of the framework. There are fifteen differentpossible goals for incorporating writing in physics labs,organized into five categories:
Communication , Writingas professionalization , Writing to learn , Course logistics ,and
Social emotional . The first three categories were apriori (i.e., we identified these main ideas in the literatureand used them to organize the list of goals that resultedfrom analyzing the data), while the latter two categoriesemerged from the data analysis process. As shown in Fig.1, the categories are not mutually exclusive—they repre-sent distinct, but interrelated, ideas and thus there areseveral instances of overlap between them. Further, thegoals in the framework are of different grain sizes. Theyrepresent the breadth of possible goals for students thatone might have when incorporating writing in a physicslab class, from a general understanding of writing as animportant part of science, to specific skills like being ableto write a cohesive narrative.
A. Communication
This category generally treats writing as communica-tion, and focuses largely on the final product (rather thanthe process) of the writing. From the lens of communi-cation, the primary purpose of writing is for the writerto demonstrate what they know or share what they did.The general idea of students being able to clearly com-municate their work is a commonly cited objective forscience classes generally and physics lab classes morespecifically . The goals in this category are about help-ing students develop general communication skills for thesake of communication, regardless of future career or pro-fession. The Communication category encompasses fivedifferent goals:
Cohesive narrative , Different modes of writing , Argumentation , Content mastery , and
Nature ofscience (because this final goal lies at the intersectionof many categories we include it in its own subsection,Section IV F).
1. Cohesive narrative
The underlying idea of this goal is that sections ofa piece of writing are not separate and independentthoughts, but rather connect to one another to form acohesive and consistent story. One goal of incorporatingwriting in physics labs is to help students be able to writea cohesive narrative, an important step in achieving clearand effective communication.When talking about what they are looking for in stu-dents’ lab reports, one instructor identifies a cohesive nar-rative as an important element: “I think one of the biggest things for me is acoherent narrative...you would read it and feellike, okay, this could be written like a good sci-entific paper. It’s coherent in the narrative.It ties the bigger picture in with what they’redoing specifically, and then goes back to thatbigger picture at the end. I think what a lot ofstudents want to do is see each section as aseparate thing. Like, here’s my experiment.Here’s the data I got. Let’s talk analysis.You should be like, ‘Here’s a graph. Let’s talkabout it and what it means. Or, here’s howthis might have tied in to the limitations of theequipment.’ For me, it’s really the fact thatthere’s continuity and that the sections reallywork together to make the whole story. Morethan anything, that’s what I think a good labreport should have.”—Instructor 1
Here, the instructor identifies coherence as an importantelement of a good lab report; their goal is for studentsto develop the skill of telling a cohesive story about theirexperiment. This instructor says elsewhere in the in-terview that they specifically coach students not to usethe results section of their report as a “data dump, butrather to connect everything together to say what theydid and what it means. Blakeslee documents a simi-lar approach in an ethnographic case study of a graduatestudent learning to write a journal article with the guid-ance of a research advisor—in this case, the student hada tendency to focus first on technical descriptions andformatting such that early drafts of the paper looked likea journal article, but did not have a cohesive narrative.The role of the research advisor was thus to help the stu-dent learn how to communicate their results as a coherentstory. As the instructor in our study indicates, this skillmay be targeted and developed through students writinglab reports in advanced lab classes. FIG. 1. Framework for thinking about and understanding the role of writing in physics lab classes. There are fifteen goalsorganized into five overlapping categories. WAP=Writing as professionalization. WTL=Writing to learn. *The Nature ofScience and Identity goals did not appear in our data, but we identified them as important goals for the community of physicseducators and thus added them to the framework.
2. Different modes of writing
One goal for incorporating writing in final projectsmay be so that students can engage in different typesof writing—writing with different purposes for differentaudiences. Many aspects of a given piece of writing, suchas tone, organization, or level of detail shift dependingon the context. Facility with navigating this context-dependence is one skill that we might want students todevelop in a physics lab class. Indeed, practicing differ-ent types of writing that each require different skills ,or being able to communicate to different audiences andwrite in different contexts are identified in science edu-cation literature as goals for students . The Differentmodes of writing goal exists in both the
Communication and
WAP categories because you might imagine wantingstudents to practice the general communication skill ofbeing able to write in different ways for different audi-ences, or you might want students to engage in differentmodes of writing because that is what they will have to doif they go on to a career in science or engineering (writingproposals, reports, memos, etc.). In our interview study,instructors talked about the goal of having students en-gage in different modes of writing in ways that alignedwith both the
Communication and
WAP categories.When talking about why they have students write pro-posals, one instructor said:
Part of the goal is to...get them to write in adifferent context about experimental physics. Different contexts than just the lab reports.—Instructor 3
This instructor has identified the general need for stu-dents to write about experimental physics in differentcontexts, where here we interpret “contexts” to meandifferent kinds of writing with different end goals (i.e., ina proposal, the writer is laying out a plan and convincingthe reader of importance or feasibility, while in a report,the writer is describing what they have done and mak-ing conclusions based on evidence they have provided toreaders).Instructors talked both about the general need for stu-dents to practice different types of writing (as illustratedin the above quote), but they also identified individualspecific modes of writing that were important for stu-dents to engage in. Importantly, instructors who didthis identified multiple individual modes of writing, fromwhich we infer the goal of having students engage in dif-ferent kinds of writing. We consider examples of thesetypes of writing and separate them into formative and summative modes, based on the intended audience andpurpose. Formative writing takes place as the project ishappening, and is used in one way or another to helpprogress the project and/or to prepare for summativecommunication later on. The audience of formative writ-ing could be the student themselves (now and in the fu-ture), their group members, or the instructor. Lab note-books are the most common type of formative writtencommunication in lab classes . When discussing theimportance of lab notebooks, one instructor states:
It’s like this is one of the really importantmodes of communication that you need topractice and you need to get good at. It’s com-munication in this case, both with your...labpartners right now, and with yourself in thefuture. —Instructor 3
In describing this formative mode of communication asan important thing for students to practice, this instruc-tor identifies the audiences to which this particular kindof writing is directed.In the context of final projects in labs, summative com-munication takes place at the culmination of the project(or one stage of the project). It may be written for peers,the instructor, or a general science audience with the pri-mary purpose of having the student share what they didor what they learned. Lab reports are a common formof summative writing in lab classes; one instructor talksabout the purpose and the audience of a final report: “I think that’s the most important, to be ableto really explain what you’ve done...I wouldsay that...I’m the audience, but..maybe [also]anybody with an undergraduate physics de-gree.” —Instructor 4
Here, the instructor articulates the importance of a sum-mative report by identifying the purpose (that studentsclearly explain what they did for their project) and au-dience (the instructor and general physics audience).
3. Argumentation
A goal for writing in final projects might be to helpstudents learn how to develop a persuasive argument.Generally, the practice of argumentation involves con-vincing or persuading the reader, but it may also involvecritique of your own or others’ work by questioning mod-els, assumptions, and claims. This goal falls under boththe
Communication and
WAP categories because an in-structor might find the general communication skill ofbeing able to construct and deliver an argument to beimportant for their students to develop, but they mayalso tie the idea of argumentation directly to discipline-or profession-specific practices.One instructor, who has students write white papersand proposals as part of the process leading up to finalprojects, states:
We don’t really focus on teaching writingskills as much as persuasive skills, makingsure that the proposal has what it needs inthere to convince people.” —Instructor 2
In the interview, this instructor made it clear that thegoal of their class is not to teach students the mechanicsof writing (i.e., grammar and style), but rather to focus on the development of a persuasive argument. Argumen-tation, which involves making evidence-based conclusionsand communicating them in a succinct and persuasiveway, has been identified as a key learning outcome ofphysics labs .
4. Content mastery
A common goal of having students complete a writ-ing assignment in any physics class is to have them learnphysics content. The writing can facilitate the learningas well as be the medium through which students demon-strate their learning. In our data, the
Content mastery goal appeared only in the
WTL category, but we also in-clude it in the
Communication category in the frameworkbecause part of content mastery requires that the learnerdemonstrates their mastery of the content, and this is of-ten done through writing . This aspect of the Contentmastery goal is also connected to the
Grading goal—instructors might need students to demonstrate their un-derstanding of the content through writing so that theycan assign a grade. The instructors in our interview studydid not talk about this communicative aspect of contentmastery (aside from the specific connection to grading),and so we leave the example quote for the
WTL sectionbelow (Section IV C).
B. Writing as professionalization
The
WAP category emphasizes the idea that writingis important because it is something you have to do asa scientist. Goals in this category focus on practices,norms, and skills that students will need to be proficientin if they become a professional physicist (or other re-lated profession). While there is some overlap betweenthe
WAP and
Communication categories,
WAP is morespecific in that it focuses on the profession or discipline,whereas the
Communication goals are independent froma students major, career, or profession. Many recent re-forms in physics lab classes have centered around the ideaof WAP , using writing as a tool for developing students’sense of identity as a physicist and preparing them to par-ticipate in and contribute to the community of practicingphysicists . Part of this preparation involves communi-cating using “forms authentic to the discipline” , orusing authentic writing experiences to support authenticscience experiences . There are six goals that fall underthis umbrella: Different modes of writing , Argumenta-tion , Professional norms , Writing as a practice neededfor technical professions , Engaging with scientific litera-ture , and
Nature of science . We describe the first fivehere, and leave the discussion of the
Nature of science goal for Section IV F below).
1. Different modes of writing
As described above in Section IV A 2, this goal isfounded on the idea that it is important for students tobe able to write about experimental physics in multiplecontexts (i.e., writing with different purposes for differ-ent audiences). Whereas above we introduced the idea of
Different modes of writing under the general
Communi-cation category, it may also be a specific goal of instruc-tors to have students engage in different kinds of writing,both formal and informal, that mirror what they wouldhave to do as professional physicists . That is, not onlyis it good to be able to communicate (in writing) differ-ent things to different audiences, but a practical skill forsomeone hoping to start a career as a physicist is to beable to write a report, a proposal, a memo, keep a labnotebook, etc. Indeed, JTUPP identifies being able towrite for a variety of audiences as a learning goal thatwill promote career-readiness for physics undergraduatestudents . In our interview study, when talking abouthow professionalism was an important part of writing intheir class, one instructor said: “Professionalism for me is another one, andthat can involve..the mechanics of writing andbeing cognizant of how you present a pieceof communication. But I also want to getthem understanding how you write for dif-ferent types of audiences, what is an appro-priate way to write for different audiences.”—Instructor 1 Here, the instructor situates
Different modes of writing within the professional practice of being a physicist. Asa followup to this statement, the instructor then talksabout the unique context of a final project where stu-dents are only focusing on one experiment (as opposedto a different lab each week) as a place where they wantstudents to consider, “how would you present that sin-gle experiment in different ways?”
Being able to presentinformation about an experiment in different ways to dif-ferent people is a skill that students will need to practiceas part of their training to become professional physi-cists. While this example illustrates generally the needto have students practice different kinds of writing asa part of the professionalization process, we also mightimagine more specific examples of wanting students topractice particular modes of writing. Again, we identifyformative and summative modes of writing.When talking about one common formative mode ofwritten communication—lab notebooks—an instructorsaid:
I want them to get in the habit of taking notesabout what they’ve done so that they have arecord of what they’ve done, and so that theydon’t forget what they’ve done, and that theyhave a reference. And as a way to say, “Okay,what did I accomplish today?” And have to look back and assess what it was that...theydid. I think it’s a good practice if you’re go-ing into research, to have a notebook of whatyou’ve done. I wanted to try to get them intothat habit.” —Instructor 4
Here, the instructor identifies the audience (the studentthemselves) and the purpose (to have a record to lookback on, and to facilitate self-reflection and assessmentof what they have done so far) of the lab notebook. Like-wise, Stanley and Lewandowski identify the principlesof context , audience , and timescale as encapsulating thepurpose of scientific documentation in lab notebooks.Another instructor identifies lab reports, a summativemode of written communication, as an example of a typeof technical writing students should be familiar with. I feel like it is something that is not neces-sarily talked about and emphasized, but it’s askill that is realistic that they’re going to haveto do, is some type of technical writing. It’snot always going to be a lab report format.”—Instructor 1
The instructor clarifies that lab reports are useful forhaving students practice summative written communi-cation, but notes that in reality they may not actuallybe writing reports, but some other form of summativetechnical writing. This further explains the importanceof helping students develop the ability to shift betweendifferent modes of writing, attending to the changing au-dience and purpose, a complex skill that is identified inscience education as one that is important for studentsto practice .
2. Argumentation
As described above in Section IV A 3, one goal for in-cluding writing in final projects is to help students learnhow to develop an argument and be persuasive. Whenthis goal is specifically connected to preparing studentsfor a profession or career—i.e., we want to help studentslearn to write persuasively because being able to con-struct a persuasive argument is an important skill for ascientist—we include it in the
WAP category.In talking about the role that persuasive writing playsin proposals, one instructor said:
I find as a scientist, it’s a realistic thing youhave to do. You very often have to justify whyyou want funding, why you want to be able todo this.” —Instructor 1
To an instructor assigning writing in a physics labclass, argumentation may be important for the sake ofgeneral communication skills (Section IV A 3), but it mayalso have discipline-specific meaning and importance.For example, in developing learning goals for an ad-vanced laboratory course, physics education researchers0and physics faculty at University of Colorado Boulderidentified argumentation as a key aspect of the commu-nication goals they had for students in their course . Indoing so, they narrow the general idea of argumentationto define specifically what the process of argumentationlooks like in physics: not only convincing an audienceof claims supported by evidence, but first justifying theappropriateness and accuracy of predictive models usedto describe a reliable set of data. In this way, a goalof incorporating writing in a physics lab class might beto help students develop these argumentation skills spe-cific to the discipline of (experimental) physics. Likewise,many researchers identify persuading skeptical audiencesof the validity of your conclusions or interpretations asa common practice of scientists and thus something weneed to help students develop .
3. Professional norms
Another reason instructors might incorporate writingin lab classes is so that students can learn the discoursenorms (i.e., rules or conventions) of the discipline, includ-ing style, format, tone, etc. If students continue on to acareer in physics (or other related discipline), they willneed to know how to write like a physicist—what goesin an abstract, how to write in a professional and scien-tific tone, and when to use or define jargon. We couldimagine a goal of developing “professionalism” to be ex-tended more broadly to focus on how to speak and actin professional physics settings, but in this framework wefocus only on the written communication element. Wefurther narrow this goal to focus on specific norms orconventions that one must learn in order to contribute toa given professional community, as defined by communityconsensus, and do not include more general professionalnorms (e.g., physicists communicate their work throughwriting papers). These more general items are encom-passed in other areas of the framework.One instructor articulates the professional norms goalwhen talking about how they want students to write finallab reports:
Part of it is just generally...the mechanicsand the formats of writing. If you’re expectedto write a technical report, you need head-ings...It’s the language you choose to use. It’sthings like, okay, a graph needs to be read-able and not be Excel defaults. It’s stuff that,okay, if an employer hires you, they wouldsay, ‘This is good work.”’ —Instructor 1
This professor articulates the goal of having their stu-dents learn and adopt the often unspoken rules regardingmechanics and format of scientific writing, a goal thatis echoed by the science education community .The process of learning these norms could be supportedby engaging with scientific literature (Section IV B 5) orpracticing different modes of writing (Sections IV A 2 and IV B 1). In this way, the possible goals for writing out-lined in this framework are distinct from, yet can interactwith, one another.
4. Writing as a practice needed for technical professions
One reason instructors might include writing in theclass is because written communication is important fora variety of technical professions. This goal is not as spe-cific as the others in the
WAP category; rather than iden-tifying a specific element of writing, this goal generallyaddresses the writing practices or experiences commonin technical professions (e.g., experimental physics, engi-neering, science in general). Instructors of upper-divisionlab classes typically want to prepare students for skillsthey will need beyond their lab classes assuming they goon to a career in physics or other technical profession .Instructors in our data who espouse this goal talk aboutwriting as a practice, habit, or generally as somethingthat scientists do (including something they personallydo in their daily life), and they often speak about theimportance that writing holds in the process of scienceor in the practice of technical professions. For example,one instructor talks about keeping a lab notebook as ascientific practice:
Partially it’s going back to the realism of theprocess, it’s a really important thing, becauseif you work in any technical environment, youneed documentation of what you’re doing.”—Instructor 1
Here, the instructor describes the written communicationof a lab notebook as a realistic part of the process in atechnical environment, and thus it is important that stu-dents have a chance to practice and experience keeping anotebook. This is aligned with work in PER that iden-tifies the scientific practice of keeping a lab notebook asa possible learning goal of physics lab classes . Labnotebooks are perhaps the most obvious form of writ-ing recognized as a practice or habit that we might wantstudents to develop, yet other forms of writing are alsointegral to the process of science.Another instructor touches on the Writing as a prac-tice needed for technical professions goal when discussingwhy lab reports are an important aspect of the finalprojects in their class: ...it’s to give them practice writing. Specif-ically scientific writing of a scientific re-port in...the unique context where it’s some-thing that they have proposed and pulledtogether and completed from beginning toend...I think...having a solid conclusion to thework... [is] a characteristic of scientific life.Right? I mean you’ve got these projects. Youstart them. Maybe they don’t go exactly howyou think they should go, but nonetheless, the progress, the scientific process, writing newgrants, everything depends on you writing re-ports wherever you got to, and I think thatskill is part of the point...Getting practice ofdoing, carrying out that skill is one of themain reasons why we do final reports.” —Instructor 3 This instructor talks about writing reports as a “char-acteristic of scientific life,” and that even when your ex-periment does not go as planned, you have to be ableto summarize what happened and identify next steps insome form of summative writing. Given that many of thestudents in their class will propose and conduct an ex-periment for their final project and either not get resultsor not be able to complete the experiment as planned,it is important to this instructor that students are ableto write a concluding report, an experience that mirrorsthe reality of scientific life. The goal of having studentssee and understand writing as a scientific practice inher-ent to the process of scientific knowledge generation issupported in the literature on scientific writing . This isalso connected to the Nature of science goal, which wediscuss below in Section IV F.
5. Engaging with scientific literature
Part of writing as a scientist involves reading scien-tific literature. One goal for incorporating writing in labsmight be to help students develop the skill of finding rele-vant papers, reading them, and situating their own workor project within a broader scientific community.One instructor connects this goal specifically to helpingstudents develop skills they will need to be a physicist.In describing the process of writing a proposal for thefinal project, they say that it should be implemented: ...in a way that forces them to engage withthe literature and to actually read and do alittle bit of lit review kinds of things, whichis an important...skill for being a physicist.”—Instructor 3
In our data, this goal showed up only in the
WAP cat-egory, as instructors talked about how literature reviewsare a realistic practice of scientists. However, not only isthis practice an important part of the scientific writingprocess, but reading scientific literature may facilitatestronger understanding of the content or subject. Thus,in the framework this goal straddles the
WAP and
WTL categories (Section IV C 4).The AAPT recommendations for laboratory learninggoals suggest that as part of “communicating physics”students should be able to interpret and evaluate thework of others ; in order to develop and practice this skill,students first need to learn how to engage with scientificliterature . Moskovitz and Kellogg argue for the im-portance of students reading primary scientific commu-nication (scientists presenting original research to other scientists) in order to learn how to communicate as scien-tists , since reading scientific articles is a specific prac-tice of scientists important to the process of experimen-tation and generation of scientific knowledge . C. Writing to learn
The
WTL category emphasizes writing as a tool forthinking and learning, focusing on the process of writ-ing more than the final product . Goals in this cate-gory focus on the idea that writing can be used to facili-tate learning of the content or practices of experimentalphysics, and that writing requires “frequent practice, ef-fective feedback, and continual revision” .
1. Content mastery
Some form of writing is often used in science classes tohelp students learn science content (e.g., short answerresponse questions on homeworks or exams, reflectionquestions, or tutorial worksheets) . Though concep-tual understanding is not always the primary learningobjective in physics lab classes, we might assign writingin order to, among other things, facilitate content mas-tery. For example, using the Science Writing Heuristic(SWH) as a replacement for a traditional lab report inintroductory chemistry labs has been shown to improveboth students’ attitudes toward, and conceptual under-standing of, chemistry . In the scenario of studentsdesigning and conducting their own experiments in anadvanced physics lab, a goal for a given writing assign-ment (e.g., proposal or lab notebook) might be to helpstudents learn and become familiar with the particulartopic area associated with their project.We see an example of this goal in our data when oneinstructor details their goals for having students writefinal reports: [The end goal of the report is] both documen-tation for what theyve done and a physicsbackground understanding of the purpose ofthe lab.” —Instructor 4 In the framework, this goal straddles the
WTL and
Communication categories because the process of writingmay facilitate learning content, but the final product ishow students communicate (to themselves, their peers,or the instructor) what they have learned.
2. Reflection
Reflection is often identified in STEM education asa practice or skill that can be beneficial for support-ing students’ learning, problem-solving, enthusiasm, con-fidence, persistence, and epistemological views of sci-ence . A common way to have students2practice and engage in reflection in any physics class isthrough writing. In the context of final projects in labclasses, this might mean using writing to help studentsreflect on their learning, what they do and do not un-derstand, the progression of their project, or the processof science in general. This reflection could be realizedthrough specific reflective writing prompts, or throughthe process of a more typical form of written commu-nication like a lab notebook or report. However, Lipp-mann Kung and Linder caution that, at least in a labo-ratory setting, we must pay attention not to the amount of metacognition students are engaging in, but to the in-stances of metacognition that allow students to transitioninto a sense-making mode .In our data, one instructor identified reflection as anelement of the practice of keeping a lab notebook: The reflective bit as well, I think is some-thing that we emphasize in the lab notes. It’snot just data points written without comment.Right? It’s I think maybe when I envisionthis reflective goal, often times it’s a littlebit more like reflecting on your own learn-ing process and things like that. But I thinkactually again, writing down how you fig-ure out what’s going on in your experimentwhen you don’t know what the next steps areyet or what the new versions of the experi-ment might look like. Your thought processeshaven’t converged yet. I think maintainingthe lab notebook, being forced to put into writ-ing what you think is going on at every step,I think that feeds into that goal of reflectingon the process of doing experimental physics.”—Instructor 3
Depending on the context and the type of writing, wecan encourage students to engage in different kinds ofreflection. Multiweek final projects may be particularlywell-suited to encouraging students to reflect on the pro-cess of experimental physics, as this instructor has indi-cated.
3. Synthesis
The process of writing requires and facilitates synthesisof ideas. One goal of having students engage in writingcould be to support them in being able to make senseof what their project means and connect ideas together.Within the
WTL category, this goal focuses specificallyon the sense making aspect of synthesis; sitting down towrite about an experiment you conducted requires you tosynthesize the ideas and thus can facilitate your learningof content or process. This goal can be closely connectedto being able to construct a
Cohesive narrative (see Sec-tion IV A 1). They are distinct in that the
Synthesis goalis more about the process of synthesizing, while
Cohesive narrative is more about the presentation and communi-cation of a narrative. The former is likely required inorder to construct the latter. This is an example of howthe elements of the framework may be concurrent with,or depend on, one another.One instructor touches on the idea of synthesis as theyreflect generally about why they incorporate writing intheir class:
For me, the big thing about writing is writingto make a point and to make a point correctlyand coherently. Not everyone’s going to writea lab report. Not everyone’s going to write apaper. But you have to know how do you putall these pieces of evidence and all this back-ground, how can that work together for you todraw conclusions? I find it as a tool hopefullyto help them understand how to analyze thesituation.” —Instructor 1
In line with the WTL approach, this instructor de-scribes writing as a tool for analysis—the act of writ-ing provides opportunity for students to practice draw-ing conclusions from evidence and synthesizing many dis-parate pieces. These sense making, analysis, or construc-tion of meaning processes are often goals for studentsin physics laboratory classroom or professional environ-ments .
4. Engaging with scientific literature
Through reading scientific literature, students maylearn physics content and/or ways of thinking. The
En-gaging with scientific literature goal only appeared in ourdata in the
WAP category because instructors focusedon needing to learn the professional practice of reading,and situating your work within, a body of scientific lit-erature. In our framework, we include this goal in theoverlap between the
WAP and
WTL categories becausethe process of engaging with scientific literature may alsofacilitate learning physics content. This goal is alignedwith scholars who identify the pedagogical potential ofscientific literature as well as the need to read good writ-ing in order to improve one’s writing skills . D. Course logistics
The
Course logistics category includes goals for incor-porating writing that are related to how the class or thefinal project functions:
Facilitating the project , and
Grad-ing .
1. Facilitating the project
One common goal of incorporating various forms ofwriting is to help or encourage the students to plan and3make progress on their project. A given type of writingmay be necessary in order to move the project forward,i.e., without a thorough lab notebook, a project mightnot have much chance of succeeding. In a study of labinstructors’ learning goals, Dounas-Frazer et al. foundthat advanced optics and electronics lab classes often hadlearning goals related to written communication. Oneinstructor in their study “explicitly connected students’ability to keep good notes to their ability to iterativelyimprove their experiments” (p. 16).One instructor in our interview study talked about therole of proposals for the final projects in their class: ...for the proposal, we want them to be pre-pared so that their term project can be suc-cessful. When they start the term project theyhave the materials, they know what they’redoing, they have everything designed.” —Instructor 2 In addition to learning content and practices, a givenwriting assignment (like a proposal) may be a necessarymilestone that helps students initiate and complete anexperiment.
2. Grading
Writing is often included in lab classes because theinstructor needs to know what the student did and/orlearned so that they can assign a grade . In manyclasses (especially those with large enrollment), instruc-tors do not have direct or frequent access to students’work throughout the course of a lab project, and mustrely on various forms of written communication in orderto evaluate the student’s progress. One instructor artic-ulates this goal when talking about why they assign finalreports: There’s some other boring answer about meneeding to have the information about howthey’re actually thinking about things in theend.” —Instructor 3
E. Social emotional
The
Social emotional category includes goals for writ-ing related to students personal experiences in the socialenvironment. The
Social emotional elements may be fa-cilitated by, or help to facilitate, goals in other categories.For example, the process of reflection may help to facil-itate a positive affective response toward experimentalphysics, or the development of a sense of identity as aphysicist may help to facilitate content mastery. The
Social emotional category is ontologically different fromall the rest in that it encompasses experiences or feelings that we might want students to have, while the other cat-egories primarily include writing-related skills we want them to develop. The writing-specific goals (in the Com-munication , WAP , and
WTL categories) all take placewithin the social environment of a classroom community.Thus, we consider the
Social emotional category to beconnected to, or underlying all the rest. In Fig. 1, wecan think about the yellow
Social emotional oval as exist-ing on a different plane beneath the others. This categoryemerged from the data, but encompasses things that arebroadly important to the physics education communityand are cited as potential benefits or goals of writing inlab classes .Our understanding and representation of this cate-gory are informed by a sociocultural perspective of learn-ing wherein we consider context to be integral to learn-ing . Like any act of cognition, we thus view writ-ing as situated in context , as a process and prod-uct that involves people working together to constructunderstanding and generate knowledge while learningand adopting community norms and practices . Thereare three goals in the Social emotional category—
Affect , Agency , and
Identity —which overlap and interact witheach of the other goals in the framework, while still stand-ing alone as a distinct category of possible goals for stu-dents engaging in writing in a physics lab class. In thisway, we consider the four categories (
Communication , WAP , WTL , Course Logistics ) to reside in a
Social emo-tional bath, while the
Social emotional goals inform, andare informed by, the other goals. We illustrate some ofthese connections below.
1. Affect
In general, a goal of many physics classes is to facil-itate positive affective responses for students; we mightuse writing as a tool to guide this experience. In the con-text of students conducting final projects in a lab class,an instructor might structure and implement writing as-signments such that they facilitate positive affective re-sponses to the process of experimental physics. For ex-ample, one instructor comments on the importance ofhaving students write final reports even when their ex-periment does not work out as planned: ...emotionally, I think it’s probably importantto feel like [the project] came to a conclusionand to actually have good feelings about whatit is to be an experimentalist even if the ex-periment didn’t necessarily go as they wantedit to.” —Instructor 3
Here, the instructor identifies the students’ emotions(feelings about what it means to be an experimentalist)as important outcomes of the final project. They suggestthat writing a final report can help students feel goodabout what they accomplished in the class. In this partic-ular example, the affective goal is connected to students’identity—the instructor wants writing in the class to fa-cilitate positive affective responses such that students feel4good about being an experimentalist. In the framework,we include
Identity as a distinct goal (see Section IV E 3below), noting that it may be coupled with other goalssuch as
Affect . While this example quote illustrates an af-fective goal connected to identity, they do not necessarilyneed to be coupled. We also might imagine an instruc-tor assigning a given type of writing in order to help thestudents have fun doing their projects, regardless of howthey may (or may not) identify as a physicist or experi-mentalist. Positive affect is often identified as a goal oflab classes , and specific writing assignments have beenshown to facilitate positive attitudinal shifts and in-creased enthusiasm among students.
2. Agency
A goal of many physics lab classes is for students tohave ownership over their project or experiment. The ex-perience of ownership can be empowering for students and benefit their motivation , feelings of pride , andpersistence in STEM . In a multiple case study, Dounas-Frazer, Stanley, and Lewandowski investigated howstudents came to feel ownership over their final projectsin an advanced lab class. They identified five dimen-sions of ownership—student agency, instructor mentor-ship, peer collaboration, interest and value, and affec-tive responses—and found that: “(i) coupling divisionof labor with collective brainstorming can help balancestudent agency, instructor mentorship, and peer collabo-ration; (ii) initial student interest in the project topic isnot always a necessary condition for student ownershipof the project; and (iii) student ownership is character-ized by a wide range of emotions that fluctuate in time asstudents alternate between extended periods of struggleand moments of success while working on their project” (p.18-19). In our data, the idea of ownership came upgenerally but instructors more often talked specificallyabout the agency element. Given that agency is an im-portant part of ownership, and that writing is one waystudents can exercise and demonstrate control over theirown project, we include agency as a specific goal in ourframework for understanding the role of writing in labs.During a multiweek final project, writing could facilitatethe cycles of emotion that Dounas-Frazer, Stanley, andLewandowski documented.While outlining the goals and benefits of having stu-dents write final lab reports, one instructor says that onething they want students to get out of writing the reportsis: Specifically scientific writing of a scientific re-port in...the unique context where it’s some-thing that they have proposed and pulled to-gether and completed from beginning to end.”—Instructor 3
This same instructor speaks about how agency is builtinto the structure of the final projects when they state:
Part of the structure of the final project is thatthey get to pick what they’re doing. So [theproposals are] a framework for them to for-mally pick and formally communicate to me,to themselves, to their group mates, exactlywhat they want to do and how they want todo it.” —Instrucor 3
Together, these quotes illustrate how students can ex-ercise and demonstrate agency through different formsof writing. Not only can students have agency over thedesign of the project and associated writing, but throughwriting students may have the opportunity to direct theirown learning .
3. Identity
There is a rapidly growing body of research on theimportance of supporting the development of students’science identity (e.g., ). A major goal of manyadvanced physics labs is to prepare students to do re-search , which includes helping students develop a senseof identity as experimental physicists (or scientists moregenerally). The AAPT recommendations for undergrad-uate physics laboratory curricula suggest that “Throughlaboratory work, students should gain the awareness thatthey are able to do science” . Writing is a specific ele-ment of laboratory work through which students maycome to see that they can participate in, and contributeto, the physics community . Though the Identity goalonly came up indirectly in our interviews with instruc-tors (e.g., through talking about student affect, as shownin the example quote in Section IV E 1), we include it inthe framework as it plays an important role in physicslab classes, particularly in multiweek final projects inwhich students are designing and conducting their ownexperiments. Further, there is something very personalabout writing (even the “objective,” technical writingof an experimental physicist), that makes it particularlywell-suited as a site for identity development.In an account of the history of teaching writing in sci-ence, Lerner articulates the central role of identity in thewriting of a scientific article: “The scientific article as a way of thinkingabout the process and communication of sci-ence is tightly wound to its authors’ identi-ties as scientists or would-be scientists. Inother words, the key questions, methods foraddressing those questions, and ways of situ-ating those questions and answers within anongoing body of research speak to the humanact of science, not merely to a static docu-ment” (p. 214).This goal has strong connections to the overall WAP category, and specific goals of
Content mastery , Reflec-tion , as well as
Agency and
Affect (as we have described5above). The concept of writing as professionalization isvery much connected to identity development—if stu-dents feel like they can be an experimentalist or theyenjoy doing experimental physics, then they might bemore likely to learn and take up the professional practicesand skills identified in the
WAP category of the frame-work (Section IV B). On the other hand, experiencingand adopting professional norms and practices could helpstudents feel like they belong as a member of the profes-sion or can contribute to the community of practice . Identity may be especially related to
Content mastery because when a student feels like they understand thecontent of physics, they are more likely to see themselvesas a physicist, and if a student has a sense of identityas a scientist, they may be more likely to engage withthe content or feel confident that they can learn the con-tent. The connections between
Identity and
Reflection may be similarly strong given that reflection can involveprocessing an experience and attending to your personalfeelings about it . Additionally, the process of reflec-tion may facilitate content mastery, which in turn mayinform a sense of disciplinary identity. In this way, iden-tity development may exist as a specific goal of writing inlabs, but also have strong interactions with other goals.Like the Social emotional category as a whole, identitycan inform, and be informed by, the other writing-skillsoriented goals.
F. Nature of Science
The
Nature of science goal exists in the overlap be-tween the
Communication , WAP , and
WTL categories,with strong connections to the
Social emotional category.Because the idea of the nature of science plays a uniquerole in this framework, we describe it here in its own sec-tion, and discuss how it connects several different goals,spanning multiple categories.Goals of physics lab classes often involve supportingthe development of students’ attitudes, expectations, orbeliefs about the nature of experimental physics . Inour framework, we use the term Nature of Science (NOS)as shorthand for Nature of Experimental Physics to re-fer broadly to epistemological beliefs about the natureof knowledge (what does it mean to generate knowledge,know, or learn in the discipline of experimental physics)as well as expectations about the process and practiceof experimental physics. NOS beliefs are foundational toeverything that happens in a lab class and as such, the
NOS goal exists at the intersection of the three writingskills categories (
Communication , WAP , WTL ) in ourframework. One might implement writing in a lab classin order to help students see written communication asan important part of how scientific knowledge is gener-ated (
Communication ). Or, taking a
WTL approach, onemight use writing as a tool to facilitate learning aboutcontent and practices of science, including “disciplinaryways of knowing” , the methods and process of science , or having students reflect on their own epistemic viewsabout science . Additionally, writing may be used tocultivate specific epistemological views that align withprofessional practice in the discipline ( WAP ).There are a variety of ways writing may be used tosupport students’ NOS beliefs in a lab class. One exam-ple is the SWH , which aims to help students see sci-ence as a process of constructing explanations by mak-ing connections and building on prior knowledge. TheSWH template encourages these views about the natureof science through writing by emphasizing inquiry as fun-damental to the process of scientific knowledge genera-tion . Another approach is to assign written reflections(either as separate assignments or as part of a lab note-book entry) about the students’ own attitudes toward,or beliefs around, the nature of experimentation . Ad-ditionally, the way that we implement or frame writingcan send consequential epistemological messages to stu-dents. Incorporating a WTL approach can help to shiftfrom a “knowledge telling” to “knowledge generating”epistemology, thereby helping students see science not asa collection of facts, but as a way of thinking or processof meaning making .There are strong connections between the NOS goaland the
Social emotional category. In a case studyanalysis of undergraduate students’ research experiences,Quan and Elby documented shifts in students’ NOSviews (toward a more nuanced view of science in whichnovices are able to meaningfully participate) that werecoupled to shifts in their self-efficacy. Likewise, there maybe interplay between the NOS goal and the
Agency , Af-fect , or
Identity goals that may be realized through writ-ing. For example, we might imagine that the experienceof having agency over their own experiment may helpstudents come to see experimental physics as a messyand iterative process of knowledge generation, character-ized by cycles of frustration and excitement in which“nothing works the first time” .Further, we can think of the NOS goal,
Social emo-tional category, and writing skills categories (
Communi-cation, WAP, WTL ) as mutually informing or mediatingone another, as discussed in the next section.
V. DISCUSSIONA. Connections between goals within and acrosscategories
We developed this framework primarily as a researchtool to understand in depth the various goals we mighthave for students engaging in writing in a lab setting. Asa scaffolding for organizing information, the frameworkprovides a structure for the list of possible goals and or-ganizes them into broader categories, allowing us to ex-amine the interplay between goals within and across cate-gories. For example, being able to engage with scientificliterature and synthesize information, the processes of6which can facilitate learning content and practices, maybe in service to developing an argument and communicat-ing it through a cohesive narrative. Further, attendingto each of these specific aspects together may address abroader goal of supporting students’ development of so-phisticated views about the nature of science—the gener-ation of scientific knowledge happens through a conver-sation among a community of scientists who synthesizeinformation, make claims based on evidence, constructarguments and present them to one another, situatingtheir argument among a body of scientific work. Thus,the distinct goals of
Argumentation , Engaging with scien-tific literature , Synthesis , Cohesive narrative , and
Natureof science work together to paint a picture of the kind ofwriting we might want students to engage in in physicslab classes.We also see connections between the
Course logistics goals and other writing-skills focused goals, e.g.,
Grading and
Content mastery . Writing is a primary way for in-structors to find out what students are thinking or whatthey have learned; the process of writing can facilitatethis learning (
WTL ) and the final product can be usedto communicate what they have learned (
Communica-tion ) for the purposes of practicing communication skills,sharing with peers, or receiving a grade in the course.The
Nature of science goal exists in the overlap be-tween the
Communication , WTL , and
WAP categories,and may play a unique role in connecting the writingskills oriented goals and the
Social emotional goals, whichall mutually inform, or mediate, one another. For exam-ple, students views about the nature of science are in-formed by their experiences with, and attitudes towards,science (
Affect ), which may also be informed by students’reflection on their own experiences of the process of ex-perimental physics, or their own epistemic beliefs. If stu-dents have agency over an experiment, and exercise thatagency, in part, through writing, they may reflect on thatexperience in a positive light and come to develop sophis-ticated views about the nature of science, which may helpthem to engage in the scientific process of constructingand communicating an argument. Further, teaching stu-dents about the nature and importance of argumentationin physics and giving them space to practice constructingand communicating arguments may help them come toview scientific knowledge as dialogic, tentative, and some-thing that is constructed and advanced through writtencommunication, which in turn may facilitate identity de-velopment. Developing a sense of identity as a physicistor having a positive affective experience may facilitatestudents’ reflections about the content they are learning,the writing skills they are developing, or their own viewsabout the nature of science. In this way,
Nature of sci-ence is the focal point that connects and mediates theother goals, which feels appropriate for lab classes wherestudents learn what it means to do physics, and thussupporting the development of students’ views about thenature of experimental physics is of utmost importance.Considering the different approaches to writing and the interconnected nature of the goals helps us to make senseof the role that writing does, or should, play in physicslab classes. B. Value of categories
Ultimately, the boundaries we place between the goalsand categories in the framework are artificial. As we haveillustrated through a few examples, there may be overlapor simultaneity among goals, or the lines between themmay be blurred in certain contexts. It is useful to de-lineate them and organize them into different categoriesso that we can have a common language with which todiscuss what the goals mean, and to reflect on our ownviews of writing as instructors and researchers. For ex-ample, the way that we view writing impacts the way wetend to implement it, which in turn sends a message tostudents about the role of writing in science. If writingassignments are only intended for the instructor (i.e., forevaluation purposes), this emphasizes the final productand a view of writing as demonstration or knowledge astelling . The way that writing is employed and also eval-uated in the classroom, will impact the way that studentsview and value it . If we are unaware of these views,or do not attend to them with our students through in-tentional choices in the classroom, students may developviews or habits counter to those we see as productive fortheir learning and participation in the discipline . C. Benefits of final projects
We developed this framework in the specific context ofmultiweek final projects in advanced lab classes. Thoughwriting is typically incorporated in all types of lab classes(and these classes may address many of the goals de-scribed in the framework), project-based labs may beable to uniquely facilitate the goals identified in theframework. We give a few examples here, noting thatin a follow-up paper we will conduct case study analysesthat will speak to the benefits (and limitations) of finalprojects, with respect to writing, in more depth.Stanley and Lewandowski recommend that labclasses be structured in such a way so as to give real pur-pose to the lab notebooks, in order to facilitate authenticscientific documentation experiences for students. Whenstudents design and conduct their own experiments, oftenaround a topic that the instructor is not familiar with,students have to rely on their own (and their group mem-bers’) documentation practices in order to make progresson the project ( Facilitating the project ). This also re-quires the students to engage in reflection throughout theproject, evaluating at each step what the goal is, whatthey have done, the problems they have encountered, andhow they plan to move forward (
Reflection ). Engagingin this kind of reflection around a novel project with noclear answer or solution also encourages students to rec-7ognize the iterative nature of experimental physics (
Na-ture of science ). An important element of final projectsthat can facilitate student engagement in reflection ontheir project as well as the nature of experimental physicsis the long timescale—it can be difficult for students todo much reflection in one or two weeks. Working onthe same project for several weeks provides time for thiskind of deep thinking that can lead to refinement of theproject.The longer timescale of final projects also provides am-ple time for students to revise their writing. Revision isa key element of helping students become better writ-ers (and better scientists), and we need to teach themwhat it means to revise a piece of writing (i.e., not justediting for typos, but thinking deeply about organiza-tion of ideas and argument construction) . The revisionprocess can take a long time, and thus multiweek finalprojects are beneficial in this regard. Peer review can bea useful way to guide students through the revision pro-cess, and can be implemented in laboratory classroomsettings in a variety of ways . Three of the four in-structors we interviewed included a peer review processat some stage of the final projects. The process of peer re-view can help students to reflect on their experiment andtheir writing—reading and critiquing writing from peerscan help students realize what they could have done dif-ferently on their projects or in their writing ( Reflection ).The act of critiquing others’ work can facilitate an under-standing of what it means to construct and communicatean argument (
Argumentation ) or to synthesize results(
Synthesis ) and communicate them through a
Cohesivenarrative . Additionally, depending on how the peer re-view process is structured in the context of the course, itcan help students to understand what an authentic sci-entific writing process looks like and the role that revi-sion plays . Thus, engaging in peer review can supportstudents’ views about the central role that writing playsin the generation of scientific knowledge ( Writing as apractice needed for technical professions and
Nature ofscience ), facilitating identity development along the way(
Identity ).An overall goal of advanced lab classes is oftento prepare students to do research . Compared toapprenticeship-style undergraduate research experiences,the environment of project-based labs can be beneficialbecause it allows students to have significant control overthe experiment and the writing ( Agency ), whereas in areal research project, the results of the experiment andthe final written product matters for the professor, thuslimiting the amount of control students can have . Ad-ditionally, in an ethnographic case study that exploresthe mentoring relationship between a graduate studentand their advisor, Blakeslee documents the experience ofa graduate student writing their first journal article .In this case, the student did not necessarily recognizethe writing process as a learning experience itself, whichimpeded the ability of the advisor to guide the studentthrough the process of synthesis, argument construction, and adoption of professional discourse norms. Blakesleesuggests that in making all kinds of learning goals explicitto students, “students’ learning can remain situated andembedded in activity while at the same time being moreperceptible” (p.160). Project-based labs have the bene-fit of making the learning explicit, and can convey to stu-dents that developing writing skills is a goal of the coursealong with learning laboratory skills like troubleshootingor experimental design.Lastly, many lab classes include a specific goal of hav-ing students engage in collaboration . We did not in-clude collaboration in our framework because we do notsee it as an end goal of engaging in writing, though theyoften exist in tandem. That is, engaging in writing mayfacilitate learning what it means to collaborate, but wedo not assign writing in labs because we want to teachcollaboration. There are many other ways that we teachstudents about the importance of collaboration and howto do so effectively and equitably (e.g., structuring thecourse such that students must work in groups or rotatethrough assigned roles). Though learning about effectivecollaboration is not necessarily an end goal of having stu-dents engage in writing, we do see them as intimatelyconnected. Future case study analyses will explore therole of collaboration in implementation of writing. D. Limitations and Generalizability
The framework shown in Fig. 1 is the result of a codinganalysis of four interviews with instructors of advancedphysics lab classes and synthesis of common ideas in lit-erature on writing in science and/or lab classes. Thegoal of the coding analysis was to identify possible goalsfor writing—because we were concerned with existenceof codes and not prevalence, we did not count the fre-quencies of codes or look for patterns among the four in-terviews. Because the coding analysis of interview datawas corroborated and supplemented by literature, the re-sulting framework is broadly applicable to physics labclasses. That is, the ideas represented by the frame-work are not unique to the course contexts of the fourinstructors we interviewed. Further, our overall researchproject focuses on the final project portion of advancedlab classes. Given the literature on writing in scienceand in lab classes in which our framework is grounded,we do not believe that the ideas represented by the frame-work are specific to project-based labs. Rather, student-designed multiweek projects may have unique affordancesfor addressing a variety of the goals for, and approachesto, writing presented in the framework.One limitation of this work is that we could havemissed something that did not appear in the interviewdata or in the literature that we reviewed. In orderto mitigate this issue, we presented the framework tophysics education researchers and lab instructors exter-nal to this project in order to check for face validity andidentify any obvious missing elements. After these dis-8cussions, the changes made to the framework were at thelevel of specific wording of goals and definitions. Therewere no additional goals or categories identified that werenot already included in the framework.We feel confident that the resulting framework holdsface validity with physicists who commonly teach labclasses. That said, we do not intend for this framework tobe exhaustive, nor do we expect a single lab class to haveeach of these goals in mind when incorporating writing.Rather, it gives us a sense of possible goals for having stu-dents engage in writing in lab classes, what they mightmean, and how they might interact with one another.
VI. IMPLICATIONS
The framework is intended to be used by researchersor instructors as a tool to facilitate thinking about andunderstanding the role of writing in lab classes. Specifi-cally, it can be used to: a) investigate or analyze the rolethat writing plays in different kinds of physics lab classes,b) inform future research questions, and c) inform peda-gogical decisions or curricular design.
A. Implications for research
There is a dearth of research on writing in physics labclasses. This paper begins to address that gap by provid-ing a tool that researchers can use to investigate and un-derstand the role of writing in lab classes. In a forthcom-ing paper, we will present case study analyses of project-based advanced lab classes, using our framework as alens through which to view the role of writing in the labclasses. We anticipate that each class or instructor willtarget a different subset of the goals and that connectionsbetween goals may be more or less present depending oncontexts and approaches. Using our framework as a re-search tool in this way will lead to deeper insights intothe role that writing can play in project-based advancedlabs. Other researchers could use this framework as atool to study various lab classes. For example, it couldbe used to identify the existence and prevalence of differ-ent goals for writing across different kinds of lab classes(first year, beyond first year, project-based, verificationlabs, large enrollment, etc.) or different types of writingassignments (notebooks, proposals, reports, etc.).As a first step in beginning to address the dearth ofresearch around writing in physics lab classes, this frame-work opens up several avenues for future research: Howdo physics instructors incorporate writing in lab classesin order to attend to some (or all) of the goals identifiedin the framework? How effective are the current practicesaround teaching scientific writing in lab classes? Whatare students’ experiences with, and views around, writ-ing in lab classes? Do students see the purpose of writingas being aligned with Communication, WTL, or WAP?How do different features or elements of lab classes im- pact students views around, and experiences of, scientificwriting? We call on the physics education research com-munity to begin to investigate these questions.
B. Implications for teaching
The first step in designing, refining, or assessing acourse is to define the learning goals. The framework wehave presented here defines and describes possible goalsfor implementing writing in lab classes. It may be a use-ful tool for instructors to help articulate or expand theirthinking around the purpose of incorporating writing inlab classes. If an instructor wanted to focus on a partic-ular goal, they may choose to structure writing assign-ments in a certain way. For example, if one wanted toemphasize WTL (or more specifically, reflection), theymight emphasize the process of writing in the timing,grading, and structure of a writing assignment by: in-cluding peer review, having students reflect on the revi-sion process, having students turn in progressively morefinalized drafts throughout the term, or grading studentson the thoughtfulness of their revisions and not solely onthe final written product.Our future work will provide further resources for in-structors by presenting case study analyses of what itmay look like to implement writing in project-based ad-vanced lab classes, in service of the goals defined here.
VII. CONCLUSIONS
To create a framework for understanding the role ofwriting in physics lab classes, we conducted interviewswith four advanced lab instructors, and supplemented thedata with ideas from literature on writing in science. Theresulting framework consists of fifteen possible goals thatone might have for students when incorporating writingin a physics lab class, organized into five categories. Thegoals are distinct from, yet can interact with, one an-other.Writing is an important part of science broadly, andexperimental physics specifically. In the undergraduatephysics curriculum, students encounter writing most fre-quently in lab classes, which often include ideas aboutcommunication or writing as explicit learning goals ofthe course . We have begun to address the lack ofresearch around writing in physics lab classes by investi-gating possible goals for writing. We see this as a firststep toward understanding how to leverage writing toteach students physics content, engage students in prac-tices and professional norms of experimental physics, helpstudents develop clear communication skills, and supportstudents’ identity development in the domain of experi-mental physics.9
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank the instructors withwhom we are partnering on this project, Dimitri Dounas-Frazer and Laura Ros for prior work on this project andearly drafts of the interview protocol, and members of the CU PER group for helpful feedback on the developmentof the framework. This work is supported by NSF grantDUE-1726045 and PHY-1734006. Viewpoints expressedhere are those of the authors and do not reflect views ofNSF. ∗ [email protected] Dimitri R. Dounas-Frazer and H. J. Lewandowski, “Noth-ing works the first time: An expert experimental physicsepistemology,” in (American Association of PhysicsTeachers, 2016) pp. 100–103. N. G. Holmes, Jack Olsen, James L. Thomas, andCarl E. Wieman, “Value added or misattributed? A multi-institution study on the educational benefit of labs for re-inforcing physics content,” Physical Review Physics Edu-cation Research , 1–12 (2017). Natasha G. Holmes and Carl E. Wieman, “Introductoryphysics labs: We can do better,” Physics Today , 38–45(2018). Paul W. Irving and Eleanor C. Sayre, “Conditions forbuilding a community of practice in an advanced physicslaboratory,” Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Ed-ucation Research , 010109 (2014). Cary Moskovitz and David Kellogg, “Inquiry-based writingin the laboratory course,” Science (New York, N.Y.) ,919–920 (2011). Dimitri R. Dounas-Frazer and H. J. Lewandowski, “TheModelling Framework for Experimental Physics: descrip-tion, development, and applications,” European Journal ofPhysics , 064005 (2018). Neal Lerner, “Laboratory Lessons for Writing and Sci-ence,” Written Communication , 191–222 (2007). . Joint Task Force on Undergraduate Physics Programs, Phys21: Preparing Physics Students for 21st-Century Ca-reers , Tech. Rep. (American Physical Society (APS) andAmerican Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), Col-lege Park, MD, 2016). Joseph Kozminski, H. J. Lewandowski, Nancy Beverly,Steve Lindaas, Duane Deardorff, Ann Reagan, Richard Di-etz, Randy Tagg, Melissa Eblen-Zayas, Jeremiah Williams,Robert Hobbs, and Benjamin Zwickl,
AAPT Recommen-dations for the Undergraduate Physics Laboratory Curricu-lum Subcommittee Membership , Tech. Rep. (American As-sociation of Physics Teachers (AAPT) Committee on Lab-oratories, 2014). Toni Feder, “College-level project-based learning gainspopularity,” Physics Today , 28–31 (2017). Ann M. Blakeslee, “Activity, Context, Interaction, and Au-thority: Learning to Write Scientific Papers In Situ,” Jour-nal of Business and Technical Communication , 125–169(1997). Benjamin M. Zwickl, Dehui Hu, Noah Finkelstein, andH. J. Lewandowski, “Model-based reasoning in the physicslaboratory: Framework and initial results,” Physical Re-view Special Topics - Physics Education Research ,020113 (2015), arXiv:1410.0881. Jessica R. Hoehn and Noah D. Finkelstein, “Students’ flex-ible use of ontologies and the value of tentative reasoning: Examples of conceptual understanding in three canonicaltopics of quantum mechanics,” Physical Review PhysicsEducation Research (2018), 10.1103/PhysRevPhysEdu-cRes.14.010122. Alanna Pawlak, Paul W. Irving, and Marcos D. Caballero,“Development of the Modes of Collaboration framework,”Physical Review Physics Education Research , 010101(2018). Simone Hyater-Adams, Claudia Fracchiolla, Noah Finkel-stein, and Kathleen Hinko, “Critical look at physicsidentity: An operationalized framework for examiningrace and physics identity,” Physical Review Physics Ed-ucation Research (2018), 10.1103/PhysRevPhysEdu-cRes.14.010132. Michelene T. H. Chi, “Active-Constructive-Interactive: AConceptual Framework for Differentiating Learning Activ-ities,” Topics in Cognitive Science , 73–105 (2009). Emily Marshman and Chandralekha Singh, “Frameworkfor understanding the patterns of student difficulties inquantum mechanics,” Physical Review Special Topics -Physics Education Research , 020119 (2015). David Hammer, Andrew Elby, Rachel E. Scherr, andEdward F. Redish,
Transfer of learning from a modernmultidisciplinary perspective (Information Age Publishing,2005) pp. 89–120. Bethany R. Wilcox, Marcos D. Caballero, Daniel A. Rehn,and Steven J. Pollock, “Analytic framework for students’use of mathematics in upper-division physics,” PhysicalReview Special Topics - Physics Education Research ,020119 (2013), arXiv:1307.0791. Charles Bazerman, Joseph Little, Lisa Bethel, TeriChavkin, Danielle Fouquette, and Janet Garufis, “His-tory of the WAC Movement,” in
Reference Guide to Writ-ing Across the Curriuculum (Parlor Press LLC, WestLafayette, IN, 2005) Chap. 2, pp. 14–25. Michael Carter, “Ways of Knowing, Doing, and Writing inthe Disciplines,” College Composition and Communication , 385–418 (2007). Cary Moskovitz and David Kellogg, “Primary ScienceCommunication in the First-Year Writing Course,” CollegeComposition and Communication , 307–334 (2005). L´e Onard P. Rivard, “A review of writing to learn in sci-ence: Implications for practice and research,” Journal ofResearch in Science Teaching , 969–983 (1994). V.A. Howard, “Thinking on paper: A philosopher’s lookat writing,” Varieties of Thinking: Essays from Harvard’sPhilosophy of Education Research Center , 84–92 (1988). Julie A. Reynolds, Christopher Thaiss, Wendy Katkin,and Robert J. Thompson, “Writing-to-Learn in Under-graduate Science Education: A Community-Based, Con-ceptually Driven Approach,” CBELife Sciences Education , 17–25 (2012). John C. Bean,
Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learn-ing in the Classroom (John Wiley and Sons Inc., 2011). Melissa Eblen-Zayas, “The impact of metacognitive activ-ities on student attitudes towards experimental physics,”in (American Association of Physics Teachers, 2016) pp.104–107. Dimitri R. Dounas-Frazer and Daniel L. Reinholz, “At-tending to lifelong learning skills through guided reflectionin a physics class,” American Journal of Physics , 881–891 (2015). Gina M. Quan and Andrew Elby, “Connecting self-efficacyand views about the nature of science in undergraduateresearch experiences,” Physical Review Physics EducationResearch , 020140 (2016). Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger,
Situated Learning: Le-gitimate Peripheral Participation (Cambridge UniversityPress, 1991). Benjamin M. Zwickl, Noah Finkelstein, and H. J.Lewandowski, “The process of transforming an advancedlab course: Goals, curriculum, and assessments,” Ameri-can Journal of Physics , 63–70 (2013), arXiv:1207.2177. Dimitri R. Dounas-Frazer, Laura R´ıos, Benjamin Pollard,Jacob T. Stanley, and H. J. Lewandowski, “Characterizinglab instructors’ self-reported learning goals to inform de-velopment of an experimental modeling skills assessment,”Physical Review Physics Education Research , 020118(2018). Jacob T. Stanley and H. J. Lewandowski, “Lab notebooksas scientific communication: Investigating developmentfrom undergraduate courses to graduate research,” Physi-cal Review Physics Education Research , 020129 (2016). Melissa Eblen-Zayas, “Comparing electronic and tradi-tional Lab Notebooks in the advanced lab,” in
LaboratoryInstruction: Beyond the First Year (American Associationof Physics Teachers, 2015) pp. 28–31. Jacob T. Stanley and H. J. Lewandowski, “Recommenda-tions for the use of notebooks in upper-division physics labcourses,” American Journal of Physics , 45–53 (2018). W. Brian Lane, “Letters Home as an Alternative to LabReports,” The Physics Teacher , 397–399 (2014). Peter J. Alaimo, John C. Bean, Joseph M. Langenhan, andLarry Nichols, “Eliminating Lab Reports: A RhetoricalApproach for Teaching the Scientific Paper in SophomoreOrganic Chemistry,” The WAC Journal (2009). Claudia Haagen-Schuetzenhoefer, “Improving the Qualityof Lab Reports by Using Them as Lab Instructions,” ThePhysics Teacher , 430–433 (2012). Carolyn W. Keys, Brian Hand, Vaughn Prain, and SusanCollins, “Using the Science Writing Heuristic as a Tool forLearning from Laboratory Investigations in Secondary Sci-ence,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching , 1065–1084 (1999). James A. Rudd II, Thomas J. Greenbowe, and BrianHand, “Recrafting the general chemistry laboratory re-port,” Journal of College Science Teaching , 230–234(2001). James A. Rudd, Thomas J. Greenbowe, Brian M. Hand,and Margaret J. Legg, “Using the Science Writing Heuris-tic to Move toward an Inquiry-Based Laboratory Curricu-lum: An Example from Physical Equilibrium,” Journal ofChemical Education , 1680 (2001). Charles L. Ramey II, “The Transformation of an Upper-Division Lab and Comparative Analyses of Two Scientific Writing Activities, M.S. Thesis, Texas Tech University,”(2018). Leslie Atkins Elliot, “How can I fulfill writing across thecurriculum requirements in a physics class?” (2019). Ralph Robinson, “Calibrated Peer Review,” The AmericanBiology Teacher , 474–480 (2001). Lawrence D. Margerum, Maren Gulsrud, Ronald Man-lapez, Rachelle Rebong, and Austin Love, “Applicationof Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) Writing Assignments ToEnhance Experiments with an Environmental ChemistryFocus,” Journal of Chemical Education , 292 (2007). John C. Wise and Seong Kim, “Better understandingthrough writing: Investigating calibrated peer review,”ASEE Annual Conference Proceedings , 1159–1164 (2004). Joe Kozminski and Mark Masters, “Journal of the Ad-vanced Physics Laboratory Investigation (JAUPLI): User’sGuide, Workshop, American Association of Physics Teach-ers (AAPT) Conference on Laboratory Instruction Beyondthe First Year (BFY),” (2015). Andrew Mason and Chandralekha Singh, “Using reflectionwith peers to help students learn effective problem solv-ing strategies,” in
AIP Conference Proceedings , Vol. 1289(2010) pp. 41–44, arXiv:1603.02944. David B. May and Eugenia Etkina, “College physics stu-dents’ epistemological self-reflection and its relationshipto conceptual learning,” American Journal of Physics ,1249–1258 (2002). See Supplemental Material at [URL will be inserted bypublisher] for the codebook that resulted from the codinganalysis of interviews and that was used as a foundationfor creating the framework. Julie Reynolds and Cary Moskovitz, “Calibrated Peer Re-view Assignments in Science Courses: Are They Designedto Promote Critical Thinking and Writing Skills?” Journalof College Science Teaching , 60–66 (2008). Christopher M. Gillen, “Criticism and interpretation:Teaching the persuasive aspects of research articles,”(2006). Brian Hand, Carolyn W. Wallace, and Eun Mi Yang, “Us-ing a Science Writing Heuristic to enhance learning out-comes from laboratory activities in seventh-grade science:Quantitative and qualitative aspects,” International Jour-nal of Science Education , 131–149 (2004). Alistair McInerny, Andrew Boudreaux, Mila Kryjevskaia,and Sara Julin, “Promoting and assessing studentmetacognition in physics,” (American Association ofPhysics Teachers (AAPT), 2015) pp. 179–182. Rebecca Lippmann Kung and Cedric Linder, “Metacog-nitive activity in the physics student laboratory: Is in-creased metacognition necessarily better?” Metacognitionand Learning , 41–56 (2007). Noah D. Finkelstein, “Learning Physics in Context: Astudy of student learning about electricity and mag-netism,” International Journal of Science Education ,1187–1209 (2005). H. J. Lewandowski, Daniel R. Bolton, and Benjamin Pol-lard, “Initial impacts of the transformation of a large in-troductory lab course focused on developing experimentalskills and expert epistemology,” in
Physics Education Re-search Conference Proceedings , Vol. 2018 (American Asso-ciation of Physics Teachers, 2018) arXiv:1807.03385. Noah S. Podolefsky, “Intentional Design for Empow-erment,” (American Association of Physics Teachers(AAPT), 2014) pp. 277–280. Marina Milner-Bolotin,
The effects of topic choice inproject-based instruction on undergraduate physical sciencestudents’ interest, ownership, and motivation , Ph.D. the-sis, University of Texas at Austin (2001). Angela Little, “Proudness: What is it? Why is it impor-tant? And how do we design for it in college physics andastronomy education?” STATUS: A report on women inastronomy, Newsletter published by the American Astro-nomical Society , 7–14 (2015). David I. Hanauer, Mark J. Graham, and Graham F. Hat-full, “A Measure of College Student Persistence in theSciences (PITS),” CBELife Sciences Education , ar54(2016). Dimitri R. Dounas-Frazer, Jacob T. Stanley, and H. J.Lewandowski, “Student ownership of projects in an upper-division optics laboratory course: A multiple case study ofsuccessful experiences,” Physical Review Physics Educa-tion Research , 020136 (2017). Saalih Allie, Mogamat Noor Armien, Nicolette Burgoyne,Jennifer M. Case, Brandon I. Collier-Reed, Tracy S. Craig,Andrew Deacon, Duncan M. Fraser, Zulpha Geyer, CeciliaJacobs, Jeff Jawitz, Bruce Kloot, Linda Kotta, GenevieveLangdon, Kate le Roux, Delia Marshall, Disaapele Mo-gashana, Corrinne Shaw, Gillian Sheridan, and NicoletteWolmarans, “Learning as acquiring a discursive identitythrough participation in a community: improving student learning in engineering education,” European Journal ofEngineering Education , 359–367 (2009). Robynne M. Lock and Zahra Hazari, “Discussing under-representation as a means to facilitating female students’physics identity development,” Physical Review PhysicsEducation Research (2016), 10.1103/PhysRevPhysEdu-cRes.12.020101. Karyn L. Lewis, Jane G. Stout, Noah D. Finkelstein,Steven J. Pollock, Akira Miyake, Geoff L. Cohen, andTiffany A. Ito, “Fitting in to Move Forward,” Psychologyof Women Quarterly , 036168431772018 (2017). Benjamin M. Zwickl, Takako Hirokawa, Noah D. Finkel-stein, and Heather J. Lewandowski, “Epistemology andexpectations survey about experimental physics: Develop-ment and initial results,” Physical Review Special Topics- Physics Education Research , 010120 (2014). Bethany R. Wilcox and Heather J. Lewandowski, “Stu-dents’ epistemologies about experimental physics: Validat-ing the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Surveyfor experimental physics,” Physical Review Physics Edu-cation Research , 010123 (2016). Charles Baily and Noah D. Finkelstein, “Teaching quan-tum interpretations: Revisiting the goals and practices ofintroductory quantum physics courses,” Physical ReviewSpecial Topics - Physics Education Research11