Gupta, Hammer & Redish, Proceedings for the International Conf for the Learning Sciences (2008)

Towards a Dynamic Model of Learners' Ontologies in Physics

A. Gupta, D. Hammer & E. F. Redish, Proceedings of the International Conference for the Learning Sciences, Issue 8 [ISSN: 1814-9316]. (2008)

Bing, PhD Dissertation (2008)

An Epistemic Framing Analysis of Upper-Level Physics Students' Use of Mathematics

T. J. Bing, Ph.D. Dissertation, E. F. Redish (advisor), (2008). (html TOC and abstract)

Abstract: Mathematics is central to a professional physicist's work and, by extension, to a physics student's studies. It provides a language for abstraction, definition, computation, and connection to physical reality. This power of mathematics in physics is also the source of many of the difficulties it presents students. Simply put, many different activities could all be described as "using math in physics". Expertise entails a complicated coordination of these various activities. This work examines the many different kinds of thinking that are all facets of the use of mathematics in physics. It uses an epistemological lens, one that looks at the type of explanation a student presently sees as appropriate, to analyze the mathematical thinking of upper level physics undergraduates. Sometimes a student will turn to a detailed calculation to produce or justify an answer. Other times a physical argument is explicitly connected to the mathematics at hand. Still other times quoting a definition is seen as sufficient, and so on. Local coherencies evolve in students' thought around these various types of mathematical justifications. We use the cognitive process of framing to model students' navigation of these various facets of math use in physics.

We first demonstrate several common framings observed in our students' mathematical thought and give several examples of each. Armed with this analysis tool, we then give several examples of how this framing analysis can be used to address a research question. We consider what effects, if any, a powerful symbolic calculator has on students' thinking. We also consider how to characterize growing expertise among physics students. Framing offers a lens for analysis that is a natural fit for these sample research questions. To active physics education researchers, the framing analysis presented in this dissertation can provide a useful tool for addressing other research questions. To physics teachers, we present this analysis so that it may make them more explicitly aware of the various types of reasoning, and the dynamics among them, that students employ in our physics classes. This awareness will help us better hear students' arguments and respond appropriately.

Goertzen, Scherr & Elby, AIP Conf Proceedings (2008)

Indicators of understanding: What TAs listen for in student responses

R. M. Goertzen, R. E. Scherr & A. Elby, in AIP Conference Proceedings 1064, 2008 Physics Education Research Conference, C. Henderson, M. Sabella & L. Hsu (Eds.), p 119-122 (2008). (link to journal article)

Abstract: Before we can develop effective, research-based professional development programs for graduate student physics TAs, we must first identify their current classroom practices and why they engage in these practices. Framing, a theoretical framework developed in sociology and linguistics, provides an analytical toolbox for examining the expectations that guide the actions and attention of individuals while teaching. We use framing to develop fine-grained analyses of two episodes of TAs teaching tutorials. Despite the differences in their behaviors, the two TAs are in a sense both doing the same thing; they organize their interactions with students around ``searching for indicators'' that the students understand the targeted ideas.

Russ, Coffey, Hammer & Hutchison, Science Education (2008)

Making Classroom Assessment More Accountable to Scientific Reasoning: A Case for Attending to Mechanistic Thinking

R. S. Russ, J. E. Coffey, D. Hammer & P. Hutchison, Science Education (2008)

Russ, Scherr, Hammer & Mikeska, Science Education (2008)

Recognizing mechanistic reasoning in student scientific inquiry: A framework for discourse analysis developed from philosophy of science

R. S. Russ, R. E. Scherr, D. Hammer & J. Mikeska, Science Education, 92(3), p 499-525 (2008). (link to journal article)

Abstract: Science education reform has long focused on assessing student inquiry, and there has been progress in developing tools specifically with respect to experimentation and argumentation. We suggest the need for attention to another aspect of inquiry, namely mechanistic reasoning. Scientific inquiry focuses largely on understanding causal mechanisms that underlie natural phenomena. We have adapted an account of mechanism from philosophy of science studies in professional science [Machamer, P., Darden, D., & Craver, C. F., (2000). Thinking about mechanisms. Philosophy of Science, 67, 1-25] to develop a framework for discourse analysis that aids in identifying and analyzing students' mechanistic reasoning. We analyze a discussion among first-grade students about falling objects (1) to illustrate the generativity of the framework, (2) to demonstrate that mechanistic reasoning is abundantly present even in these young students, and (3) to show that mechanistic reasoning is episodic in their discourse.

Brown & Hammer, International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change (2008)

Conceptual change in physics

D. E. Brown & D. Hammer, in International Handbook of Research on Conceptual Change, S. Vosniadou (Ed.), p 127-154, New York: Routledge (2008).

Hammer, Russ, Mikeska & Scherr, Establishing a Consensus Agenda for K-12 Science Inquiry (2008)

Identifying inquiry and conceptualizing students' abilities

D. Hammer, R. Russ, J. Mikeska & R. Scherr, in Establishing a Consensus Agenda for K-12 Science Inquiry, R. Duschl & R. Grandy (Eds.), Rotterdam, NL: Sense Publishers (2008).

Bing & Redish, Conference Proceedings (2008)

Using warrants as a window to epistemic framing

T. J. Bing & E. F. Redish, Proceedings of the Physics Education Research Conference, Edmonton, AB, July 2008, to be published.

Abstract: Mathematics can serve many functions in physics. It can provide a computational system, reflect a physical idea, conveniently encode a rule, and so forth. A physics student thus has many different options for using mathematics in his physics problem solving. We present a short example from the problem solving work of upper level physics students and use it to illustrate the epistemic framing process: “framing” because these students are focusing on a subset of their total math knowledge, “epistemic” because their choice of subset relates to what they see (at that particular time) as the nature of the math knowledge in play. We illustrate how looking for students’ warrants, the often unspoken reasons they think their evidence supports their mathematical claims, serves as a window to their epistemic framing. These warrants provide a powerful, concise piece of evidence of these students’ epistemic framing.

Redish & Hammer, Am J Phys (2008)

Reinventing College Physics for Biologists: Explicating an Epistemological Curriculum

E. F. Redish & D. Hammer, accepted for publication in Am J Phys, (2008). [with supplementary appendix]

Abstract: The University of Maryland Physics Education Research Group (UMd-PERG) carried out a five-year research project to rethink, observe, and reform introductory algebra-based (college) physics. This class is one of the Maryland Physics Department’s large service courses, serving primarily life-science majors. After consultation with biologists, we re-focused the class on helping the students learn to think scientifically – to build coherence, think in terms of mechanism, and to follow the implications of assumptions. We designed the course to tap into students’ productive conceptual and epistemological resources, based on a theoretical framework from research on learning. The reformed class retains its traditional structure in terms of time and instructional personnel, but we modified existing best-practices curricular materials, including Peer Instruction, Interactive Lecture Demonstrations, and Tutorials. We provided class-controlled spaces for student collaboration, which allowed us to observe and record students learning directly. We also scanned all written homework and examinations, and we administered pre-post conceptual and epistemological surveys. The reformed class enhanced the strong gains on pre-post conceptual tests produced by the best-practices materials while obtaining unprecedented pre-post gains on epistemological surveys instead of the traditional losses.

Redish & Smith, J of Engineering Educ (2008)

Looking Beyond Content: Skill development for engineers

E. F. Redish & K. A. Smith, Journal of Engineering Education, 97, p 295-307 (July 2008). 

Abstract: Current concerns over reforming engineering education have focused attention on helping students develop skills and an adaptive expertise. Phenomenological guidelines for instruction along these lines can be understood as arising out of an emerging theory of thinking and learning built on results in the neural, cognitive, and behavioral sciences. We outline this framework and consider some of its implications for one example: developing a more detailed understanding of the specific skill of using mathematics in modeling physical situations. This approach provides theoretical underpinnings for some best-practice instructional methods designed to help students develop this skill and provides guidance for further research in the area.

Bing & Redish, Am J Phys (2008)

Symbolic manipulators affect mathematical mindsets

T. J. Bing & E. F. Redish, Am J Phys, 76, p 418-424 (2008). (html version)

Abstract: The use of symbolic calculators such as MATHEMATICA is becoming more commonplace among upper level physics students. The presence of such powerful calculators can couple strongly to the type of mathematical reasoning students employ. These tools do not merely offer students a convenient way to perform the calculations they would have otherwise done by hand. We present examples from the work of upper level physics majors where MATHEMATICA plays an active role in focusing and sustaining their thoughts around calculation. These students still engage in powerful mathematical reasoning while they calculate, but struggle because of the narrowed breadth of their thinking. We model MATHEMATICA'S influence as an integral part of the constant feedback that occurs in how students frame, and hence focus, their work.

Gupta, Redish & Hammer, PER Conf Proceedings (2008)

Coordination of Mathematical and Physics Resources by Physics Graduate Students

A. Gupta, E. F. Redish & D. Hammer, in Proceedings of the Physics Education Research Conference, Greensboro, NC, July 2007, AIP Conf. Proc, 951, p104-107 (2008). (html version)

Abstract: We investigate the dynamics of how graduate students coordinate their mathematics and physics knowledge within the context of solving a homework problem for a plasma physics survey course. Students were asked to obtain the complex dielectric function for a plasma with a specified distribution function and find the roots of that expression. While all the 16 participating students obtained the dielectric function correctly in one of two equivalent expressions, roughly half of them (7 of 16) failed to compute the roots correctly. All seven took the same initial step that led them to the incorrect answer. We note a perfect correlation between the specific expression of dielectric function obtained and the student's success in solving for the roots. We analyze student responses in terms of a resources framework and suggest routes for future research.

Gupta, Hammer & Redish, preprint (2008)

The Case for a Dynamic Model of Expert and Novice Ontologies in Physics

A. Gupta, D. Hammer & E. F. Redish, University of Maryland, preprint (2008). (html version)

Abstract: In a series of well-known papers, Chi and Slotta (Chi, 1992; Chi & Slotta, 1993; Chi, Slotta & de Leeuw, 1994; Slotta, Chi & Joram, 1995; Chi, 2005; Slotta & Chi, 2006) have contended that a reason for students' difficulties in learning physics is that they think about concepts as things rather than as processes, and that there is a significant barrier between these two ontological categories. We contest this view, arguing that expert and novice reasoning often and productively traverses ontological categories. We cite examples from everyday, classroom, and professional contexts to illustrate this. We agree with Chi and Slotta that instruction should attend to learners' ontologies; but we find these ontologies are better understood as dynamic and context-dependent, rather than as static constraints. To promote one ontological description in physics instruction, as suggested by Slotta and Chi, could undermine novices' access to productive cognitive resources they bring to their studies and inhibit their transition to the dynamic ontological flexibility required of experts.