An exploratory study into the complexity of relations between physics lecturers’ crafting of practice and students’ expectations of quality teaching

This study contributes to research that characterises the affective learning that is evoked and taken on by students in response to their perceptions of their contextual learning environments. Interview-discussions were held with lecturers of both introductory and higher-level physics courses (n = 3) concerning how they formulated their patterns of teaching in terms of a particular conceptual framing that they considered to best optimize making learning possible. Subsequently their students (n = 212) were asked with written questions, and some select follow-up interview-discussions, to describe what they expected from ‘a good physics lecturer’. The relationships between these two things—the lecturer’s crafting of practice and the students’ expectations of quality teaching—were investigated. Results show that students’ expectations tend to match their lecturers’ practice, indicating that students are strongly influenced by a contextually based appreciation of ‘good’ teaching.     

An Investigation of Tertiary-level Learning in Some Practical Physics Courses

Experimental physics is seen as an essential part of tertiary physics education. Students are supposed to develop practical skills and advance from closed ‘cookbook’ experiments to open experiment and design experiment procedures independently. As a consequence tertiary practical physics courses increase in the level of challenge throughout an undergraduate degree program. The research reported here consists of an investigation of two solely laboratory-based experimental physics courses: a second-year course Experimental Physics and Instrumentation, and a third-year course Advanced Experimental Physics, offered at a New Zealand tertiary institution. The research suggests that although the structure, content, and teaching methods in the two courses vary; there is little difference in students' learning strategies employed in the two courses. It appears bridging experiments may be necessary to help students shift from a highly directive pedagogy at the lower levels of the undergraduate practical physics program, to a more open inquiry approach. Richard K. Coll: Author for correspondence.     

Time and space: undergraduate Mexican physics in motion

This is an ethnographic study of the trajectories and itineraries of undergraduate physics students at a Mexican university. In this work learning is understood as being able to move oneself and, other things (cultural tools), through the space–time networks of a discipline (Nespor in Knowledge in motion: space, time and curriculum in undergraduate physics and management. Routledge Farmer, London, 1994). The potential of this socio-cultural perspective allows an analysis of how students are connected through extended spaces and times with an international core discipline as well as with cultural features related to local networks of power and construction. Through an example, I show that, from an actor-network-theory (Latour in Science in action. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1987), that in order to understand the complexities of undergraduate physics processes of learning you have to break classroom walls and take into account students’ movements through complex spatial and temporal traces of the discipline of physics. Mexican professors do not give classes following one textbook but in a moment-to-moment open dynamism tending to include undergraduate students as actors in classroom events extending the teaching space–time of the classroom to the disciplinary research work of physics. I also find that Mexican undergraduate students show initiative and display some autonomy and power in the construction of their itineraries as they are encouraged to examine a variety of sources including contemporary research articles, unsolved physics problems, and even to participate in several physicists’ spaces, as for example being speakers at the national congresses of physics. Their itineraries also open up new spaces of cultural and social practices, creating more extensive networks beyond those associated with a discipline. Some economic, historical and cultural contextual features of this school of sciences are analyzed in order to help understanding the particular way students are encouraged to develop their autonomy.     

Physics and the Possibility of a Religious View of the Universe: Swedish Upper Secondary Students’ Views

This study is addressing both upper secondary students’ views of whether it is possible to combine a scientific view of the universe with a religious conviction, and their views of miracles. Students are asked about their own views as well as the views they associate with physics. The study shows that in some cases the students’ own views differ from the views they associate with physics. This we consider to be a possible problem for these students. Through looking at how the students explain the views they associate with physics concerning the issues above, we show that these views are for many of the students intertwined with and linked to other views, that in the students’ views, are part of the worldview of physics. It is common that the students associate scientism with physics. We question whether these kinds of views are necessary for the building of scientific knowledge. Consequences for the teaching and learning of science are discussed. Swedish National Graduate School in Science and Technology Education Research.     

An alternative model for textbook formation

My Masters research project is a discourse analysis of physics textbooks. I am using the term ‘discourse’ in its sociological sense rather than its linguistic sense. I have interpreted my endeavours to date as showing that there is a basic confusion underlying the writing of textbooks. Whilst authors believe that they are revealing the universe to the student/reader, they understand tacitly that more is required than just revelation. I wish to argue that the ‘more that is required’ would be more readily constructed by authors if they understood that what they are doing is arguing a case: a case that scientific knowledge is an effective and appropriate way of interpreting the world. Specializations: physics education, physics textbooks, physics teacher education.     

The Puzzle of Falling Enrolments in Physics and Chemistry Courses: Putting Some Pieces Together

This paper reports and discusses the principal findings of an Australian study exploring the decisions of high achieving Year 10 students about taking physics and chemistry courses (Lyons, 2003). The study used a ‘multiple worlds’ framework to explore the diverse background characteristics that previous quantitative research had shown were implicated in these decisions. Based on analyses of questionnaire and interview data, the study found that the students’ decisions involved the complex negotiation of a number of cultural characteristics within their school science and family worlds. Many of the students regarded junior high school science as irrelevant, uninteresting and difficult, leaving them with few intrinsic reasons for enrolling in senior science courses. The study found that decisions about taking physical science courses were associated with the resources of cultural and social capital within their families, and the degree to which these resources were congruent with the advantages of choosing these courses. The paper concludes that the low intrinsic value of school science and the erosion of its strategic value contribute to the reluctance of students to choose physical science courses in the senior school.     

Graduate Teaching Assistants’ Knowledge Development for Teaching a Novel Physics Curriculum

Matter and Interactions (M&I) has recently been adopted as a novel introductory physics course that focuses on the application of a small number of fundamental physical principles to the atomic and molecular nature of matter. This study investigated how five physics teaching assistants (TAs) developed professional knowledge for teaching from their teaching experiences. Specifically, we explored what experiences influenced their knowledge development for teaching the innovative introductory physics course, M&I. Through a qualitative, multiple case study research design, data was collected from multiple sources: non-participant observations, digitally recorded video, semistructured interviews, TAs’ written reflections, and researchers’ field notes. As TA’s progressed through the semester, two experiences emerged as having a significant role in their development of knowledge for teaching M&I: (1) setting teaching, learning, and curriculum goals for their classes; and (2) encountering dilemmas of teaching and learning. The results of this study will contribute to future preparation of the innovative introductory physics course as well as other college level science courses.     

How Will We Understand What We Teach? - Primary Student Teachers’ Perceptions of their Development of Knowledge and Attitudes Towards Physics

The research outlined in this paper investigated how student teachers perceived the development of their knowledge and attitudes towards physics through video recorded practical workshops based on experiments and subsequent group discussions. During an 8-week physics course, 40 primary science student teachers worked in groups of 13–14 on practical experiments and problem-solving skills in physics. The student teachers were video recorded in order to follow their activities and discussions during the experiments. In connection with every workshop, the student teachers participated in a seminar conducted by their physics teachers and a primary science teacher; they watched the video recording in order to reflect on their activities and how they communicated their conceptions in their group. After the 8 weeks of coursework a questionnaire including a storyline was used to elicit the student teachers’ perceptions of their development of subject matter knowledge from the beginning to the end of the course. Finally, five participants were interviewed after the course. The results provided insight into how aspects such as self-confidence and the meaningfulness of knowledge for primary teaching were perceived as important factors for the primary science student teachers’ development of subject matter knowledge as well as a positive attitude towards physics.     

Historical Experiments in Students’ Hands: Unfragmenting Science through Action and History

Two students, meeting together with a teacher, redid historical experiments. Unlike conventional instruction where science topics and practices often fragment, they experienced interrelatedness among phenomena, participants’ actions, and history. This study narrates actions that fostered an interrelated view. One action involved opening up historical telephones to examine interior circuitry. Another made sound visible in a transparent air column filled with Styrofoam bits and through Lissajous figures produced by reflecting light off orthogonal nineteenth century tuning forks crafted by Koenig and Kohl. Another involved orienting magnetic compasses to reveal the magnetism of conducting wires, historically investigated by Oersted and Schweigger. Replicating Homberg’s triboluminescent compound elicited students’ reflective awareness of history. These actions bore pedagogical value in recovering some of the interrelatedness inherent in the history and reintroducing the wonder of science phenomena to students today.     

Students’ Preconceptions About Evolution: How Accurate is the Characterization as “Lamarckian” when Considering the History of Evolutionary Thought?

In this paper, the main points of Lamarck’s and Darwin’s theoretical conceptual schemes about evolution are compared to those derived from 15 years old students’ explanations of evolutionary episodes. We suggest that secondary students’ preconceptions should not be characterized as “Lamarckian”, because they are essentially different from the ideas that Lamarck himself possessed. Most students in our research believed that needs directly impose changes on animal bodies in order to survive in a given environment and accepted the possibility of extinction whereas Lamarck believed that it was the effect of use or disuse that would produce changes on body structures and that species would transform but would not die out. We conclude that the relationship between secondary students’ ideas and historical views on evolution should be treated more skeptically, given the differences in the historical, social and cultural contexts, and that instruction should focus on students’ ideas of need-driven evolution as well as on the role of chance in the evolutionary process.     

Understanding student pathways in context-rich problems

This paper describes the ways that students’ problem-solving behaviors evolve when solving multi-faceted, context-rich problems within a web-based learning environment. During the semester, groups of two or three students worked on five physics problems that required drawing on more than one concept and, hence, could not be readily solved with simple “plug-and-chug” strategies. The problems were presented to students in a data-rich, online problem-based learning environment that tracked which information items were selected by students as they attempted to solve the problem. The students also completed a variety of tasks, like entering an initial qualitative analysis of the problem into an online form. Students were not constrained to complete these tasks in any specific order. As they gained more experience in solving context-rich physics problems, student groups showed some progression towards expert-like behavior as they completed qualitative analysis earlier and were more selective in their perusal of informational resources. However, there was room for more improvement as approximately half of the groups still completed the qualitative analysis task towards the end of the problem-solving process rather than at the beginning of the task when it would have been most useful to their work.     

Consistent results with the consistency hypothesis? The effects of epistemic beliefs on metacognitive processing

We explored relations between students’ epistemic beliefs, metacognitive monitoring and recall performance in the context of learning physics through metaphor. Eighty-three university undergraduate students completed questionnaires designed to measure their epistemic beliefs and prior knowledge about Newtonian physics. Students were epistemically profiled as rational, empirical, or metaphorical in their approaches to knowing. Using a think-aloud protocol, students read a text on Newton’s First and Third Laws. The text included metaphors as examples of the various laws described. Results revealed that students profiled as metaphorical engaged in more metacognitive processing compared to students profiled as rational or empirical. Moreover, path analyses revealed that metacognitive monitoring positively predicted recall performance. Results challenge Muis’ (2008) consistency hypothesis; the ways in which knowledge is represented in text may be the linking factor for relations between metacognitive monitoring and epistemic beliefs rather than the underlying epistemology of the domain.     

Physical education and sport science undergraduate students as multimedia and web developers: Moving from the user’s to the creator’s perspective

The increasing importance that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have been gaining for Physical Education (PE) and sports pedagogy has generated the need to prepare ICT-proficient prospective PE teachers within PE and sport science university departments. This study was aimed at: (a) the design and implementation of two project-based elective courses on ICT in education (entitled ‘Informatics in Education’ and ‘Computers in Physical Education Teaching’) for the undergraduate students of a PE and sport science department, and (b) the investigation of students’ responses to the courses and instructor’s experiences from organizing and imparting the courses. The courses were focused on educational multimedia and web development for PE. Twenty-three students that had attended ‘Informatics in Education’ and 13 students that had attended ‘Computers in Physical Education Teaching’ participated in the study. Research data were collected through student questionnaires and instructor’s notes. It was found that students were helped to acquire basic multimedia and web development skills for educational purposes, and that their responses to the courses were positive overall. The courses fulfilled students’ expectations and were successful in equipping students with self-confidence in their ability to make use of ICT in PE courses and to construct multimedia and web-based learning materials. Furthermore, students were provided with opportunities to express their creativity and improve their future instructional practices. However, the study also brought to light the various difficulties and challenges of training prospective PE teachers in the didactical utilization of ICT at undergraduate level.     

Students’ Overuse of Linearity: An Exploration in Physics

In mathematics education, a vast amount of research has shown that students of different ages have a strong tendency to apply linear or proportional models anywhere, even in situations where they are not applicable. For example, in geometry it is known that many students believe that if the sides of a figure are doubled, the area is doubled too. However, also history of science provides several cases of thinkers who inadequately postulated linear relations to describe situations. This article focuses on secondary school students’ over-reliance on linearity in physics. Now and then, science educators report students’ tendency to assume and impose linear relations in physics, but—as far as we know—no substantial efforts were undertaken to study this phenomenon systematically. We conducted an empirical investigation aimed at identifying the competence of 8th- and 11th-graders—before and after being taught the relevant physical topics—to qualitatively grasp various situations in physics, as well as their tendency to quantify that qualitative insight linearly. The results provide an ambivalent picture of students’ overuse of linearity in physics: Although linear reasoning is sometimes used as a default strategy, even after instruction that addresses the relevant physical contents, this study also indicates that context is taken into account more often than is suggested by research on mathematical problem solving.     

Identifying and Addressing Student Difficulties with the Millikan Oil Drop Experiment

The Millikan oil drop experiment has been characterized as one of the ‘most beautiful’ physics experiments of all time and, certainly, as one of the most frustrating of all the exercises in the undergraduate physics laboratory. A literature review reveals that work done on addressing student difficulties in performing the oil drop experiment has, to date, not achieved a significant measure of success. The historical background of the oil drop experiment is well established in the literature from the perspective of historians of science, but not so from the perspective of teachers and students of science. A summary of historical details surrounding the original experiment suitable for use in revising the instructional approach is presented. Both Millikan and his graduate student, Fletcher, are featured with the view to emphasizing details that humanize the protagonists and that are likely to raise student interest. The issue of the necessary reliance on presuppositions in doing speculative research is raised, both from the historical account and from the insights of university physics students who heard the historical account and performed the experiment. Difficulties current students have in performing the experiment are discussed from the perspective of Hodson (Stud Sci Educ 22:85–142, 1993) framework and the students’ own observations. Last, further historical materials are outlined that may be used to encourage student insight into the fundamental nature of electricity. It is proposed that these aspects are essential as a basis for identifying and addressing student difficulties with the Millikan oil drop experiment.

“Shut up and calculate”: the available discursive positions in quantum physics courses

Educating new generations of physicists is often seen as a matter of attracting good students, teaching them physics and making sure that they stay at the university. Sometimes, questions are also raised about what could be done to increase diversity in recruitment. Using a discursive perspective, in this study of three introductory quantum physics courses at two Swedish universities, we instead ask what it means to become a physicist, and whether certain ways of becoming a physicist and doing physics is privileged in this process. Asking the question of what discursive positions are made accessible to students, we use observations of lectures and problem solving sessions together with interviews with students to characterize the discourse in the courses. Many students seem to have high expectations for the quantum physics course and generally express that they appreciate the course more than other courses. Nevertheless, our analysis shows that the ways of being a “good quantum physics student” are limited by the dominating focus on calculating quantum physics in the courses. We argue that this could have negative consequences both for the education of future physicists and the discipline of physics itself, in that it may reproduce an instrumental “shut up and calculate”-culture of physics, as well as an elitist physics education. Additionally, many students who take the courses are not future physicists, and the limitation of discursive positions may also affect these students significantly.     

Looking from a CHAT-IT perspective to undergraduate Mexican physics: organizational trajectories or professors as agents of change?

Recent elaborations on cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) (Engestr?m et al., eds., Perspectives on activity theory. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999) and its relation to organizational theories have produced a theoretical amalgam of these earlier ideas, which allow for the exploration of learning in formal organizational contexts such as schools. In this paper I reflect on Candela’s work situated in undergraduate Mexican physics by drawing attention to the CHAT-IT framework (Ogawa et al., Educational Researcher 37(2):83–95, 2008) as a viable lens. I suggest that it is important to understand the historical development of the Mexican university as an educational organization as well as the role of physics professors as agents of change whose practices contribute to not only breaking classroom walls but also to transforming the organization affecting future activity systems.     

Illuminating a dialectical transformative activist stance in education

In this essay I comment on Stetsenko’s (2008) essay that draws together the work of Vygotsky, Piaget and Dewey, as she attempts to counter the ‘new’ reductionist synthesis in public educational policy. While this theoretical work is helpful, it could be enhanced further by illuminating everyday practices of learners. I pose some questions that might provoke ongoing discussions by researchers as they transform collaboratively cultural–historical activity theory.