David Rosengrant

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.

An Overview of Recent Research on Multiple Representations

In this paper we focus on some of the recent findings of the physics education research community in the area of multiple representations. The overlying trend with the research is how multiple representations help students learn concepts and skills and assist them in problem solving. Two trends developed from the latter are: how students use multiple representations when solving problems and how different representational formats affect student performance in problem solving. We show how our work relates to these trends and provide the reader with an overall synopsis of the findings related to the advantages and disadvantages of multiple representations for learning physics.

Case Study: Students’ Use of Multiple Representations in Problem Solving

Being able to represent physics problems and concepts in multiple ways for qualitative reasoning and problem solving is a scientific ability we want our students to develop. These representations can include but are not limited to words, diagrams, equations, graphs, and sketches. Physics education literature indicates that using multiple representations is beneficial for student understanding of physics ideas and for problem solving. To find out why and how students use different representations for problem solving, we conducted a case study of six students during the second semester of a two‐semester introductory physics course. These students varied both in their use of representations and in their physics background. This case study helps us understand how students’ use or lack of use of representations relates to their ability to solve problems.

Free‐Body Diagrams: Necessary or Sufficient?

The Rutgers PAER group is working to help students develop various scientific abilities. One of the abilities is to create, understand and learn to use for qualitative reasoning and problem solving different representations of physical processes such as pictorial representations, motion diagrams, free‐body diagrams, and energy bar charts. Physics education literature indicates that using multiple representations is beneficial for student understanding of physics ideas and for problem solving. We developed a special approach to construct and utilize free‐body diagrams for representing physical phenomena and for problem solving. We will examine whether students draw free‐body diagrams in solving problems when they know they will not receive credit for it; the consistency of their use in different conceptual areas; and if students who use free‐body diagrams while solving problems in different areas of physics are more successful then those who do not.

Comparing Experts and Novices in Solving Electrical Circuit Problems with the Help of Eye‐Tracking

In order to help introductory physics students understand and learn to solve problems with circuits, we must first understand how they differ from experts. This preliminary study focuses on problem‐solving dealing with electrical circuits. We investigate difficulties novices have with circuits and compare their work with those of experts. We incorporate the use of an eye‐tracker to investigate any possible differences or similarities on how experts and novices solve electrical circuit problems. Our results show similarities in gaze patterns among all subjects on the components of the circuit. We further found that experts would look back at the circuit while solving the problem but not the novices. We also found differences in how they solve the problems. For example, experts simplified circuits when appropriate as opposed to novices who did not. They also had difficulties identifying when resistors are in parallel or in series and how to combine them.

Gaze scribing in physics problem solving

Eye-tracking has been widely used for research purposes in fields such as linguistics and marketing. However, there are many possibilities of how eye-trackers could be used in other disciplines like physics. A part of physics education research deals with the differences between novices and experts, specifically how each group solves problems. Though there has been a great deal of research about these differences there has been no research that focuses on noticing exactly where experts and novices look while solving the problems. Thus, to complement the past research, I have created a new technique called gaze scribing. Subjects wear a head mounted eye-tracker while solving electrical circuit problems on a graphics monitor. I monitor both scan patterns of the subjects and combine that with videotapes of their work while solving the problems. This new technique has yielded new information and elaborated on previous studies.

Comparing Explicit and Implicit Teaching of Multiple Representation Use in Physics Problem Solving

There exist both explicit and implicit approaches to teaching students how to solve physics problems involving multiple representations. In the former, students are taught explicit problem‐solving approaches, such as lists of steps, and these approaches are emphasized throughout the course. In the latter, good problem‐solving strategies are modeled for students by the instructor and homework and exams present problems that require multiple representation use, but students are rarely told explicitly to take a given approach. We report on comparative study of these two approaches; students at Rutgers University receive explicit instruction, while students from the University of Colorado receive implicit instruction. Students in each course solve five common electrostatics problems of varying difficulty. We compare student performances and their use of pictures and free‐body diagrams. We also compare the instructional environments, looking at teaching approaches and the frequency of multiple‐representation u...

Impulse-Momentum Diagrams.

Multiple representations are a valuable tool to help students learn and understand physics concepts.1 Furthermore, representations help students learn how to think and act like real scientists.2 These representations include: pictures, free‐body diagrams,3 energy bar charts,4 electrical circuits, and, more recently, computer simulations and animations.5 However, instructors have limited choices when they want to help their students understand impulse and momentum. One of the only available options is the impulse‐momentum bar chart.6 The bar charts can effectively show the magnitude of the momentum as well as help students understand conservation of momentum, but they do not easily show the actual direction. This paper highlights a new representation instructors can use to help their students with momentum and impulse—the impulse‐momentum diagram (IMD).

Preliminary Study of Impulse‐Momentum Diagrams

In this paper we present a new representation to help students learn about momentum, impulse and conservation of momentum which we call an Impulse‐Momentum Diagram. We include a description of this diagram as well as examples of how instructors can use them in the classroom. Next we present preliminary quantitative and qualitative data of a study we conducted where students used these representations. Our final analysis shows how students benefited from these representations.

Pre‐Service Physics Teachers and Physics Education Research

Training pre‐service teachers requires, among other things, content knowledge, pedagogical skills and pedagogical content knowledge. Teacher preparation programs have little, if any spare time to add more courses/activities to their program. However, I argue in this paper that we, as educators, must enhance the amount of physics education research in our pre‐service physics teacher training programs. In this study, I analyze the results of two different types of exposure to physics education research (PER) from two different groups of pre‐service physics teachers in our masters of arts and teaching program. The preliminary results show, for example that the PER helped the pre‐service teachers increase their understanding of student thought processes while they solved problems. Physics teachers must have this type of ability to be successful in the classroom.