Ian D. Beatty

Probing Physics Students' Conceptual Knowledge Structures through Term Association

Traditional tests are not effective tools for diagnosing the content and structure of students’ knowledge of physics. As a possible alternative, a set of term-association tasks (the ConMap tasks) was developed to probe the interconnections within students’ store of conceptual knowledge. The tasks have students respond spontaneously to a term or problem or topic area with a sequence of associated terms; the response terms and time-of-entry data are captured. The tasks were tried on introductory physics students, and preliminary investigations show that the tasks are capable of eliciting information about the stucture of their knowledge. Specifically, data gathered through the tasks is similar to that produced by a hand-drawn concept map task, has measures that correlate with in-class exam performance, and is sensitive to learning produced by topic coverage in class. Although the results are preliminary and only suggestive, the tasks warrant further study as student-knowledge assessment instruments and sour...

Viewing teacher transformation through the lens of cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT)

Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment (TEFA) is an innovative pedagogy for science and mathematics instruction. The ‘Teacher Learning of TEFA’ research project studies teacher change as in-service secondary science and mathematics teachers learn TEFA in the context of a multi-year professional development programme. Applying cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to the linked activity systems of professional development and teachers’ classroom practice leads to a model of teacher learning and pedagogical change in which TEFA is first introduced into classrooms as an object of activity, and then made useful as a tool for instruction, and then—in rare cases—incorporated into all elements of a deeply transformed practice. Different levels of contradiction within and between activity systems drive the transitions between stages. A CHAT analysis suggests that the primary contradiction within secondary education is a dual view of students as objects of instruction and of students as willful individuals; the difficulties arising from this can either inhibit or motivate TEFA adoption.

Improving Physics Instruction by Analyzing Video Games

Video games can be very powerful teaching systems, and game designers have become adept at optimizing player engagement while scaffolding development of complex skills and situated knowledge. One implication is that we might create games to teach physics. Another, which I explore here, is that we might learn to improve classroom physics instruction by studying effective games. James Gee, in his book What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2007), articulates 36 principles that make good video games highly effective as learning environments. In this theoretical work, I identify 16 themes running through Gees principles, and explore how these themes and Gees principles could be applied to the design of an on-campus physics course. I argue that the process pushes us to confront aspects of learning that physics instructors and even physics education researchers generally neglect, and suggest some novel ideas for course design.

Extreme Learning Assistants: Students' Perceptions of Their Undergraduate Laboratory Instructors

Several schools have implemented “Learning Assistant” (LA) programs, in which upper-class undergraduates serve as teaching assistants in introductory courses. At UNCG, LAs are given an unusual degree of freedom. Working in teams, they serve as the primary instructors for lab sections of the two introductory calculus-based physics courses. They co-design the lab curriculum with the professor of the lecture section, conduct all lab classes, and grade all student work. In order to investigate how students taking the lab reacted to having undergraduates as lab instructors, we gave and analyzed a short anonymous Likert-type survey probing students’ opinions at the end of the first course. We found that overall, most students reacted favorably. They found the LAs’ content knowledge and pedagogic skills to be adequate, and saw some benefit to having undergraduates rather than faculty to interact with. They also perceived that the responded to questions with guiding questions rather than authoritative answers.