Anna Karelina

Design and Reflection Help Students Develop Scientific Abilities: Learning in Introductory Physics Laboratories

Design activities, when embedded in an inquiry cycle and appropriately scaffolded and supplemented with reflection, can promote the development of the habits of mind (scientific abilities) that are an important part of scientific practice. Through the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE), students construct physics knowledge by engaging in inquiry cycles that replicate the approach used by physicists to construct knowledge. A significant portion of student learning occurs in ISLE instructional labs where students design their own experiments. The labs provide an environment for cognitive apprenticeship enhanced by formative assessment. As a result, students develop interpretive knowing that helps them approach new problems as scientists. This article describes a classroom study in which the students in the ISLE design lab performed equally well on traditional exams as ISLE students who did not engage in design activities. However, the design group significantly outperformed the non-design group while working on novel experimental tasks (in physics and biology), demonstrating the application of scientific abilities to an inquiry task in a novel content domain. This research shows that a learning environment that integrates cognitive apprenticeship and formative assessment in a series of conceptual design tasks provides a rich context for helping students build scientific habits of mind.

When And How Do Students Engage In Sense-Making In A Physics Lab?

The Rutgers PAER group developed and implemented ISLE labs in which students design their own experiments being guided by self‐assessment rubrics. Studies reported in 2004 and 2005 PERC proceedings showed that students in these labs acquire such scientific abilities as an ability to design an experiment, to analyze data, and to communicate. These studies concentrated mostly on analyzing students’ writings evaluated by specially designed scientific abilities rubrics. The new question is whether the ISLE labs make students not only write like scientists but also engage in discussions and act like scientists: plan an experiment, validate assumptions, evaluate results, and revise the experiment if necessary. Another important question is whether these activities require a lot of cognitive and metacognitive efforts or are carried out superficially. To answer these questions we monitored students’ activity during labs. (The work was supported by the NSF grants DUE 0241078 and REC 0529065.)

Studying Transfer Of Scientific Reasoning Abilities

Students taking introductory physics courses not only need to learn the fundamental concepts and to solve simple problems but also need to learn to approach more complex problems and to reason like scientists. Hypothetico- deductive reasoning is considered one of the most important types of reasoning employed by scientists. If-then logic allows students to test hypotheses and reject those that are not supported by testing experiments. Can we teach students to reason hypothetico-deductively and to apply this reasoning to problems outside of physics? This study investigates the development and transfer from physics to real life of hypothetico-deductive reasoning abilities by students enrolled in an introductory physics course at a large state university The abilities include formulating hypotheses and making predictions concerning the outcomes of testing experiments. (The work was supported by NSF grant REC 0529065.)

Searching for "Preparation for Future Learning" in Physics

“Preparation for future learning” is a term describing a new approach to transfer. In addition to focusing on learning environments that help students better apply developed knowledge in new situations; education researchers are searching for educational interventions that better prepare students to learn new information. The pioneering studies in this field were conducted by J. Branford and D. Schwartz in psychology and mathematics, specifically in the area of statistics. They found that students who engaged in innovation before being exposed to new material, learned better. We attempted to replicate their experiments in the field of physics, specifically in the area of conductivity. Using two experimental conditions and one control, we compared student learning of thermal and electrical conductivity from a written text. We present the results of groups’ performance on seven qualitative questions after their learning in this area.