Incorporating Affect in Engineering Students’ Epistemological Dynamics

Danielak, B., Gupta, A., & Elby, A. (2010). Incorporating Affect in Engineering Students’ Epistemological Dynamics. In Gomez, K., Lyons, L., & Radinsky, J. (Eds.) Learning in the Disciplines: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS2010) - Volume 2, Short Papers, Symposia, and Selected Abstracts. (pp. 411-412). International Society of the Learning Sciences: Chicago IL.

Problem-solving rubrics revisited: Attending to the blending of informal conceptual and formal mathematical reasoning

Hull, M., Kuo, E., Gupta, A., & Elby, A. (2013). Problem-solving rubrics revisited: Attending to the blending of informal conceptual and formal mathematical reasoning. Phys. Rev. ST Physics Ed. Research 9, 010105 (2013)  Link to Journal Version 

Beyond Epistemological Deficits: Dynamic Explanations of Engineering Students' Difficulties with Mathematical Sense-making

1. Gupta, A. & Elby, A. (2011). Beyond Epistemological Deficits: Dynamic Explanations of Engineering Students' Difficulties with Mathematical Sense-making. International Journal of Science Education, 33(18), pp. 2463-2488.

How students blend conceptual and formal mathematical reasoning in solving physics problems

Kuo, E., Hull, M., Gupta, A., & Elby, A. (2013). How students blend conceptual and formal mathematical reasoning in solving physics problems. Sci. Ed., 97: 32–57  doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/sce.21043

Redish & Bing, GIREP Conference Poster (2009)

Using Math in Physics: Warrants and Epistemological Frames

Edward F. Redish and Thomas J. Bing

Prepared in conjunction with Symposium, “Mathematization in Physics Lessons: Problems and Perspectives”, R. Karam and G. Pospiech, organizers. GIREP meeting, Leicester, UK, 18. August, 2009.

Abstract: Mathematics is an essential component of university level science, but it is more complex than a straightforward application of rules and calculation. Using math in science critically involves the blending of ancillary information with the math in a way that both changes the way that equations are interpreted and provides metacognitive support for recovery from errors. We have made ethnographic observations of groups of students solving physics problems in classes ranging from introductory algebra based physics to graduate quantum mechanics. These lead us to conjecture that expert problem solving in physics requires the development of the complex skill of mixing different classes of warrants – the ability to blend physical, mathematical, and computational reasons for constructing and believing a result. In order to analyze student behavior along this dimension, we have created analytical tools including epistemic frames and games. These should provide a useful lens on the development of problem solving skills and permit an instructor to recognize the development of sophisticated problem solving behavior even when the student makes mathematical errors.

(List of references)

Redish, Cooke, Dobbins, & Hall, GIREP Conference Poster (2009)

Transforming the Physics Education of Undergraduate Biology Students in Introductory Physics and Biology Courses

Edward F. Redish, Todd J. Cooke, Heather D. Dobbins, and Kristi L. Hall

Poster presented at GIREP2009, Leicester, UK, August 2009.

Abstract: In 2003, the US National Academy of Sciences issued the BIO 2010 report that called for the increased incorporation of mathematics, physics, and chemistry into undergraduate biology curriculum, and for a corresponding increase in the biological relevance of introductory science courses for biologists. This initiative has led to widespread interdisciplinary efforts that are transforming the way mathematics and chemistry is taught to US biology students, but it has not prompted comparable reform in physics. There appear to be a number of reasons for this lag. Many Physics faculty are hesitant about pruning and reorganizing traditional content and may not be familiar with the content that biologists feel is relevant and useful, while many Biology faculty are hesitant about including physics in their biology classes explicitly. At the University of Maryland, a group of physicists and biologists have started working together to better understand the roadblocks to implementing a coordinated revision of our introductory biology and physics courses for biology students. The challenges facing this effort occur at a variety of levels. 1) Introductory physics for biologists is often a “cut-down” version of introductory physics for engineers. As such, it inherits some inappropriate approaches. For example, it introduces the second law of Thermodynamics via heat engines and ignores chemical energy. This approach is inappropriate because organisms cannot convert temperature gradients into useful metabolic energy, whereas other forms of physical and chemical energy are continually being transformed in biological systems. 2) Introductory biology classes typically are “fact-based”, relying on extensive reading and focusing on concept mastery, including introducing the student to many different terms, processes, and relationships, while physics courses are structured to emphasize complex reasoning from a small set of fundamental laws and principles. 3) Physics classes rely heavily on problem-solving and are over the past decade have developed extensive active-engagement learning pedagogy, whereas biology courses still tend to rely heavily on direct lecture and protocol-based laboratories. 4) Biology classes tend to use mathematics to represent qualitative dependences, while physics classes treat math as a fundamental reasoning tool. Our poster presents examples and suggestions for bridging these gaps. Our goal is to initiate a widespread discussion among physicists and biologists regarding the physics challenge in the BIO 2010 initiative.

Redish & Sayre, GIREP Conference Poster (2009)

Resources: A Theoretical Framework for Physics Education

Edward F. Redish and Eleanor C. Sayre

Poster presented at GIREP2009, Leicester, UK, August 2009

Abstract: The Resources Framework (RF) is a structure for creating phenomenological models of high-level thinking. It is based on a combination of core stable results selected from educational research phenomenology, cognitive neuroscience, and behavioral science. As a framework (as opposed to a theory), it provides ontologies -- classes of structural elements and their behaviors -- rather than providing specific structures. These ontologies permit the creation of models that bridge existing models of knowledge and learning, such as the alternative conceptions theory and the knowledge in pieces approach, or cognitive modeling and the socio-cultural approach. Structurally, the RF is an associative network model with control structure and dynamic binding. As a phenomenological and descriptive framework, it does not (yet) create mathematical models from low-level elements. This poster outlines the RF and shows how it gives new ways of looking at traditional issues such as transfer, concepts, ontologies, and epistemology.

(List of references.)

Wittmann & Scherr, PER Conference Proceedings (2002)

Student epistemological stance constraining researcher access to student thinking: An example from an interview on charge flow

M. C. Wittmann & R. E. Scherr, in Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings, S. Franklin, K. Cummings & J. Marx (Eds.), (2002).

Abstract: A student's guiding epistemological mode (be it knowledge as memorized information, knowledge from authority, or knowledge as fabricated stuff) may constrain that student from reasoning in productive ways while also shaping the inferences a researcher can make about how that student reasons about a particular phenomenon. We discuss both cases in the context of an individual student interview on charge flow in wires. In the first part of the interview, her focus on memorized knowledge prevents the researcher from learning about her detailed reasoning about current. In the second part of the interview, her focus on constructed knowledge provides the researcher with a picture of her reasoning about the physical mechanisms of charge flow.

Lising & Elby, Am J Phys (2005)

The impact of epistemology on learning: A case study from introductory physics

L. Lising & A. Elby, American Journal of Physics, 73(4), p 372-382 (2005). (html version)

Abstract: We discuss a case study of the influence of epistemology on learning for a student in an introductory college physics course. An analysis of videotaped class work, written work, and interviews indicates that many of the student's difficulties were epistemological in nature. Our primary goal is to show instructors and curriculum developers that a student's epistemological stance - her ideas about knowledge and learning - can have a direct, causal influence on her learning of physics. This influence exists even when research-based curriculum materials provide implicit epistemological support. For this reason, curriculum materials and teaching techniques could become more effective by explicitly attending to students' epistemologies.

Elby, Am J Phys PER Suppl (2001)

Helping students learn how to learn

A. Elby, American Journal of Physics, Physics Education Research Supplement, 69(7), S54-S64 (2001). (html version)

Abstract: Students' “epistemological” beliefs—their views about the nature of knowledge and learning—affect how they approach physics courses. For instance, a student who believes physics knowledge to consist primarily of disconnected facts and formulas will study differently from a student who views physics as an interconnected web of concepts. Unfortunately, previous studies show that physics courses, even ones that help students learn concepts particularly well, generally do not lead to significant changes in students' epistemological beliefs. This paper discusses instructional practices and curricular elements, suitable for both college and high school, that helped students develop substantially more sophisticated beliefs about knowledge and learning, as measured by the Maryland Physics Expectations Survey (MPEX) and by the Epistemological Beliefs Assessment for Physical Science.

Hammer, Enrico Fermi Summer School Proceedings (2004)

The variability of student reasoning, lectures 1-3

D. Hammer, in Proceedings of the Enrico Fermi Summer School, Course CLVI, E. Redish & M. Vicentini (Eds.), Bologna: Italian Physical Society (2004).

Lecture 1: Case studies of children's inquiries, p 279-299.

Abstract: Classroom observations show variability in student reasoning, from young children through adults, even moment-to-moment for the same students in the same class. This varied phenomenology conflicts with views of naïve theories, entrenched conceptions and stages of development as stable attributes. Student knowledge and reasoning is better understood in terms of a manifold ontology of more fine-grained, context sensitive resources. Expectations of variability in student knowledge and reasoning suggest different approaches and objectives in instruction, especially in early science education.
This is the first lecture in a series of three. It introduces the overall agenda and then begins with a series of examples of children’s inquiries to reflect on the beginnings of scientific expertise.

Lecture 2: Transitions, p 301-319.

Abstract:This lecture continues the phenomenology of student reasoning from the first, beginning with brief examples of introductory physics students failing to apply basic logic and common sense. These contrast with the examples from the first lecture of children’s reasoning, but it would be a mistake to interpret the university students’ behavior as evidence that they are not capable of what we saw in elementary students. Rather, students at all ages are capable of reasoning in a variety of ways, and the bulk of this lecture focuses on examples of students shifting in their approaches and ideas over short time scales. Often these shifts follow epistemological prompts from an instructor, suggestions for how students should think about knowledge and learning.

Lecture 3: Manifold cognitive resources, p 321-340.

Abstract: The previous lectures focused on phenomenology: What sorts of occurrences do we see in students’ reasoning? This third and final lecture focuses on ontology: What sorts of things do we attribute to students’ minds? It has become conventional to speak and think in terms of conceptions, naïve theories, and stages of development. These are all attributions of stable properties, and they account well for patterns that can occur in student reasoning. They do not account well, however, for the variability and multiple patterns illustrated in the previous lectures. Research in cognitive science provides an alternative ontology of multiple, fine-grained cognitive resources that are contextsensitive in their activation. This lecture reviews some of that work and draws implications for elementary science education.

Hammer & Elby, J of the Learning Sciences (2003)

Tapping students' epistemological resources

D. Hammer & A. Elby, Journal of the Learning Sciences, 12(1), p 53-91 (2003). 

Abstract: Research on personal epistemologies has begun to consider ontology: Do naive epistemologies take the form of stable, unitary beliefs or of fine-grained, context-sensitive resources? Debates such as this regarding subtleties of cognitive theory, however, may be difficult to connect to everyday instructional practice. Our purpose in this article is to make that connection. We first review reasons for supporting the latter account, of naive epistemologies as made up of fine-grained, context-sensitive resources; as part of this argument we note that familiar strategies and curricula tacitly ascribe epistemological resources to students. We then present several strategies designed more explicitly to help students tap those resources for learning introductory physics. Finally, we reflect on this work as an example of interplay between two modes of inquiry into student thinking, that of instruction and that of formal research on learning.

Hammer & Elby, Personal Epistemology (2002)

On the form of a personal epistemology

D. Hammer & A. Elby, in Personal Epistemology: The Psychology of Beliefs about Knowledge and Knowing, B. K. Hofer & P. R. Pintrich (Eds.), p 169-190, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 

Elby & Hammer, Science Education (2001)

On the substance of a sophisticated epistemology

A. Elby & D. Hammer, Science Education, 85(5), p 554-567 (2001).

Abstract: Among researchers who study students’ epistemologies, a consensus has emerged about what constitutes a sophisticated stance toward scientific knowledge. According to this community consensus, students should understand scientific knowledge as tentative and evolving, rather than certain and unchanging; subjectively tied to scientists' perspectives, rather than objectively inherent in nature; and individually or socially constructed rather than discovered. Surveys, interview protocols, and other methods used to probe students’ beliefs about scientific knowledge broadly reflect this outlook.

Our paper questions the community consensus about epistemological sophistication. We do not suggest that scientific knowledge is objective and fixed; if forced to choose whether knowledge is certain or tentative, with no opportunity to elaborate, we would choose “tentative.” Instead, our critique consists of two lines of argument. First, the literature fails to distinguish between the correctness and productivity of an epistemological belief. For instance, elementary school students who believe that science is about discovering objective truths to questions such as whether the earth is round or flat, or whether an asteroid led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, may be more likely to succeed in science than students who believe science is about telling stories that vary with one's perspective. Naive realism, although incorrect (according to a broad consensus of philosophers and social scientists), may nonetheless be productive for helping those students learn.

Second, according to the consensus view as reflected in commonly-used surveys, epistemological sophistication consists of believing certain blanket generalizations about the nature of knowledge and learning, generalizations that do not attend to context. These generalizations are neither correct nor productive. For example, it would be unsophisticated for students to view as tentative the idea that the Earth is round rather than flat. By contrast, they should take a more tentative stance towards theories of mass extinction. Nonetheless, many surveys and interview protocols tally students as sophisticated not for attending to these contextual nuances, but for subscribing broadly to the view that knowledge is tentative.

Hammer, Elby, Scherr & Redish, Transfer of Learning: Research and Perspectives (2004)

Resources, framing, and transfer

D. Hammer, A. Elby, R. E. Scherr & E. F. Redish, in Transfer of Learning: Research and Perspectives, J. Mestre (Ed.) Information Age Publishing: Greenwich, CT (2005), pp. 89-119.

Abstract: As researchers studying student reasoning in introductory physics, and as instructors teaching courses, we often focus on whether and how students apply what they know in one context to their reasoning in another. But we do not speak in terms of “transfer.” The term connotes to us a unitary view of knowledge as a thing that is acquired in one context and carried (or not) to another. We speak, rather, in terms of activating resources, a language with an explicitly manifold view of cognitive structure. In this chapter, we describe this view and argue that it provides a more firm and generative basis for research.

In particular, our resources-based perspective accounts for why it is difficult, and perhaps unnecessary, to draw a boundary around the notion of “transfer”; provides an analytical framework for exploring the differences between active transfer involving metacognition and passive transfer that “just happens”; helps to explain many results in the transfer literature, such as the rarity of certain kinds of transfer and the ubiquity of others; and provides an ontological underpinning for new views of transfer such as Bransford, Schwartz, and Sears’ (this issue) “preparation for future learning.”

Redish, Proceedings of International School of Physics (2004)

A Theoretical Framework for Physics Education Research: Modeling Student Thinking

E. F. Redish, in Proceedings of the International School of Physics, "Enrico Fermi" Course CLVI, E. F. Redish and M. Vincentini (Eds.) IOS Press, Amsterdam (2004).

Abstract: Education is a goal-oriented field. But if we want to treat education scientifically so we can accumulate, evaluate, and refine what we learn, then we must develop a theoretical framework that is strongly rooted in objective observations and through which different theoretical models of student thinking can be compared. Much that is known in the behavioral sciences is robust and observationally based. In this paper, I draw from a variety of fields ranging from neuroscience to sociolinguistics to propose an over-arching theoretical framework that allows us to both make sense of what we see in the classroom and to compare a variety of specific theoretical approaches. My synthesis is organized around an analysis of the individual’s cognition and how it interacts with the environment. This leads to a two level system, a knowledge-structure level where associational patterns dominate, and a control-structure level where one can describe expectations and epistemology. For each level, I sketch some plausible starting models for student thinking and learning in physics and give examples of how a theoretical orientation can affect instruction and research.

Redish, Saul & Steinberg, Am J Phys (1998)

Student Expectations in Introductory Physics

E. F. Redish, J. M. Saul & R. N. Steinberg, Am J Phys, 66, p 212-224 (1998). (html version)

Abstract: Students' understanding of what science is about and how it is done and their expectations as to what goes on in a science course, can play a powerful role in what they get out of introductory college physics. In this paper, we describe the Maryland Physics Expectations (MPEX) Survey; a 34-item Likert-scale (agree-disagree) survey that probes student attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions about physics. We report on the results of pre- and post-instruction delivery of this survey to 1500 students in introductory calculus-based physics at six colleges and universities. We note a large gap between the expectations of experts and novices and observe a tendency for student expectations to deteriorate rather than improve as a result of the first term of introductory calculus-based physics.

Redish, Steinberg & Saul, ICUPE AIP (1996)

The Distribution and Change of Student Expectations in Introductory Physics

E. F. Redish, R. N. Steinberg & J. M. Saul, Invited poster, presented at The International Conference on Undergraduate Physics Education (ICUPE), College Park, MD (July 31 - Aug 3, 1996). Proceedings to be published by the American Institute of Physics, E. Redish & J. Rigden (Eds). (html version)

Abstract: Students not only bring their prior understanding of physics concepts into the classroom, they also bring to their physics class a set of attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions about the nature of physics knowledge, what the students are to learn, what skills will be required of them, and what they need to do to succeed. These "expectations" can affect not only how students interpret class activities, but also from which of these activities the students build their understanding and the type of understanding they build. We report here on the development of the Maryland Physics Expectations (MPEX) Survey, a Likert-scale survey to probe these expectations. Observations of more than 1000 students at 5 institutions in first semester physics classes show that many students have expectation misconceptions about the nature of physics and what they should be doing to learn it. Furthermore, the effect of the first semester class is to deteriorate rather than improve these expectations.