Projects

1) Toward a New Conceptualization of What Constitutes Progress in Learning Physics, K-16: Resources, Framing, and Networks (NSF REC 0440113, 4/05 - 3/08)

It's a long title, but it describes what we're after (the new conceptualization) and the theoretical bases from which we hope to build it. The core idea is that students of all ages have a rich variety of cognitive resources for reasoning about the physical world, resources they use in different ways depending on the circumstances. We're interested to understand how students extend and refine these resources and how they use them.

Teachers get objectives and materials from schools for their courses, but they very often make modifications. These can be little adjustments such as spending some extra time on a topic or skipping an activity, or they can be substantial changes, such as substituting a different activity or switching to another textbook. We're interested to understand what influences them in making these modifications, and especially what goes into their making effective modifications.

3) Helping students learn how to learn: Open-source physics worksheets integrated with TA development resources (NSF DUE 0341447, 6/04 - 5/06, extended to 6/08)

Andy Elby is the principal investigator of this project, which is to develop curriculum materials for use in introductory physics instruction that (1) allow for local customization and (2) embed professional development for instructors. Customization is possible because the materials are in electronic format. The professional development is in the form of explanations about the design of the worksheets and annotated video snippets of students using them.

4) Developing Conceptual and Teaching Expertise in Physics Graduate Students: An Integrated Approach (NSF REC 0529482, 1/06 - 7/08)

Rachel Scherr is the principal investigator of this project, which is to (1) create and teach a professional development seminar designed to help graduate students develop sophisticated teaching practices and “learning theories” they apply both to their teaching and to their own learning; and (2) study the ways in which taking the seminar and teaching in a reformed introductory physics course bring about changes in TAs’ approaches to teaching, their conceptual expertise, and their epistemologies – their views about the nature of knowledge and learning.

Case studies of elementary student inquiry in physical science (NSF ESI 9986846)

We worked for three years with a team of K-8 teachers to collect video snippets of student inquiry from their classes and develop them into case studies as materials for professional development.

The book with DVD was published last year by Heinemann. The book presents a view of scientific inquiry and six case studies of student inquiry, at grades 1-8, written by their teachers. Five of these cases come with video of the class discussion(s), which we provide on the DVD. Each case study includes detailed notes to guide conversation about the video and the case study in workshops or seminars.

Learning how to learn science: Physics for bioscience majors. (NSF REC 0087519)

Joe Redish was the principal investigator of this project. Our focus was on students' expectations and epistemologies: What do they think learning in physics entails? What do they think constitutes understanding? We'd seen that in small classes, we could help students take more productive approaches toward knowledge and learning; we were interested to find out what we could accomplish in large-lecture contexts. We found that by coordinating all aspects of the course -- lectures, labs, homework and tutorials (adapting materials developed at the University of Washington, Seattle) -- we could make a substantial difference.