Effect of 5E Teaching Model on Student Teachers’ Understanding of Weightlessness

Weight is one of the basic concepts of physics. Its gravitational definition accommodates difficulties for students to understand the state of weightlessness. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of materials based on 5E teaching model and related to weightlessness on science student teachers’ learning. The sample of the study was 9 volunteer student teachers who were in their first grade in Science Teaching Program in Fatih Faculty of Education, Karadeniz Technical University. Both qualitative and quantitative data were gathered to find answers to the research questions. Findings revealed that all physics textbooks reviewed gave gravitational definition of weight. Also the concept of weightlessness hasn’t been covered in high school and some university textbooks. It was determined that before the implementation student teachers had non-scientific explanations about weightlessness. The implementation of the 5E teaching model and materials developed are effective on learning the weightlessness. It is suggested that similar applications can also be used in other physics subjects or in other fields of science.     

Gender,identity and culture in learning physics

Student engagement in science, as defined by Iva Gurgel, Mauricio Pietrocola, and Graciella Watanabe, is of great importance because a student’s perceived compatibility with science learning is highly influenced by personal identities, or how students see themselves in relations to the world. This can greatly impact their learning experiences. In this forum, I build on the work of Gurgel, Pietrocola, and Watanabe by exploring the relationships between engagement in physics and gender, and by looking at the expansive nature of the concept of culture. I expand the conversation by investigating ways in which learning science has impacted my own identity/worldview, particularly how it affects my personal teaching and learning experiences. I focus the conversation around the relationship between gender and the experience of learning science to further the dialogue concerning identity and how it impacts engagement in science. I also look at the role of didactic transposition in the perceived disconnect with science. I reveal my experiences and analysis through a personal narrative.     

Mentoring partnerships in science education

The authors use an action research (AR) approach in a collegiate studio physics class to investigate the power of partnerships via conferences as they relate to issues of establishing a student/mentor rapport, empowering students to reduce inequity, and the successes and barriers to hearing students’ voices. The graduate teaching assistant (TA, Author 1) conducted one-on-one conferences with 29 students, elicited student opinions about the progress of the course, and talked with faculty, TAs, and an undergraduate supplemental instructor for other sections of the course. At the end of the semester, the students reported increased knowledge of the TA as a person and as an instructor, and vice versa. Sixty-five percent of students reported no interest in changing circumstances to make it easier to talk about personal concerns with the TA. College students reluctantly voiced their opinions about the course, possibly due to the power structure of the classroom. Other TAs in the department expressed mostly disinterest in the project, while faculty members were interested in student learning but skeptical of student empowerment. A case study of one student is presented, wherein his attendance improved in the course and he received additional help outside class, both possibly as a result of the student/TA conferences. Students in this studio physics section were more likely to interact directly with faculty or TAs during lectures, but less likely to do so during lab sessions, than were students in a non-studio physics section.     

Exploratory Talk and Task-based Learning: A Case Study of a Student’s Learning Journey on an MA (Education) English Language Teaching Course

This article records and evaluates a student’s learning journey in two modules on an MA (Education) English Language Teaching (ELT) programme: an Oracy and ELT Pedagogy module and an Educational Technologies module. The notions of ‘exploratory talk’ and ‘task-based learning’ are explored using a single case study with material drawn from the student’s autobiography and diary, the spoken and written assignments, and the student and lecturers’ reflections on completion of the modules. We show, through the use of autobiography and critical reflection, what the student brings to the course and how this reflection allows him to use and transfer knowledge from one module to another. We analyse the ways in which the modules complement each other and how this influences the student’s learning and teaching practice. We then identify the key features of his learning in relation to ELT pedagogy.     

Lab Work and Learning in Secondary School Chemistry: The Importance of Teacher and Student Interaction

Laboratory work is considered essential in promoting students’ learning of science and of scientific inquiry. What the students perceive as important to learn from a regular laboratory exercise is probably affected by the teacher’s objectives. We study the extent to which one teacher’s objectives are fulfilled during lab work, and how teacher–student and student–student interactions contribute to developing learning experiences from the laboratory exercise. Do students encounter opportunities to learn in agreement with the teacher’s objectives? This explanatory single case study includes use of a palette of methods, such as pre- and post-interviews, observations and video documentation from an experienced secondary school teacher and her 8th grade (aged 13–14) students’ laboratory work. Our results point to the importance of teacher involvement to help students understand what to look for, how to do it and why. Especially teacher–student interactions during lab work seemed to influence what students perceived as important to learn. In the laboratory exercise in this case, the teacher helped the students to observe and to use their observations in their explanations. The lab work included learning experiences other than those addressed by the teacher, and the teacher’s intentions were partially fulfilled. Not only what the teacher says, but also how the teacher acts is important to help students understand what to learn from a laboratory exercise.     

Episodic memories and the longitudinal impact of high school physics on female students’ physics identity

Students enter physics classes with negative attitudes towards physics compared to the other sciences. Female students are more likely to opt out of a second higher-level physics course. Thus, the broad goal of this work is to better understand how to have the most lasting positive impact on female students’ attitudes and motivations towards learning physics after a single physics course in high school. Through longitudinal case studies of six female students using the frameworks of episodic memory and physics identity, we explore the most impactful features of students’ high school physics experiences. The data is drawn from three years of student interviews and one initial student survey. Our results indicate that the students could remember in detail and with longevity their experiences with physics causing high arousal and negative initial valence, such as teachers presenting physics knowledge in a counter-intuitive way. The students can remember the context but not the details of their experiences with physics causing low arousal and non-neutral valence, such as their teacher sharing a story about physics. Experiences that were eventually tied to positive valence had positive impacts on female students’ physics identity maintenance, such as problem solving activities where no one was left behind.     

Body‐Building: A Female Student's Use of the Transitional Spaces of a Painting Degree Course to Explore her Sexual Desirability and Aesthetics as a ‘Grotesque’ Female Body

Whilst a part of the fine art degree course is about teaching technical skills and learning from tutor/peer group crits, a larger part is about the facilitation of a ‘safe’ and structured space in which students gain the confidence to experiment with personal ideas, to hone a self‐critical reflection and understand who they are as individuals, before being cast out into the world as ‘artist’. In this article I examine the thought processes and decision‐making of one undergraduate female painting student. For this student, who struggled to find her own ‘grotesque’ female body image in the canon of art historical works or contemporary popular media, the spaces of the painting degree course created a frame for possible enactments of identity and desire, as well as for playing with roles and practices. Through a mix of interviews with the student, viewing her visual work and written narratives, I analyse how she was able to carve out a space for her visual representation within the institutional frame. My analysis reveals how this student uses the transitional spaces of the degree course to develop creative strategies through which to explore her sexual desirability and aesthetic self. As an individual who felt marginalised from the visual realm of the ‘body beautiful’, the degree course offered an important refuge where she could examine how she felt about her own body and develop a confidence and character to present her body to the world.     

Designing a Bridging Discourse: Re-Mediation of a Mathematical Learning Disability

Students with disabilities present a unique instructional design challenge. These students often have qualitatively different ways of processing information, meaning that standard instructional approaches may not be effective. In this study I present a case study of a student with a mathematical learning disability for whom standard instruction on fractions had been ineffective. With regard to theory, I draw on Lev Vygotsky’s framing of disability and then use Anna Sfard’s conceptualization of mathematics as a discourse to design a fraction re-mediation that provided a bridge from the student’s discourse to the canonical mathematics discourse. This bridging discourse was used in 5 videotaped re-mediation sessions with the case study student. A fine-grained analysis of the re-mediation sessions traced the ways in which the student’s discourse shifted over time, which enabled her to solve problems she had previously been unable to solve. This study provides a proof of concept for reconceptualizing remediation and illustrates the potential utility of a bridging discourse to help students who have a history of failure gain access to the canonical mathematics discourse and content.     

Learning to Deflect: Conceptual Change in Physics During Digital Game Play

How does deep conceptual change occur when students play well-designed educational games? To answer this question, we present a case study in the form of a microgenetic analysis of a student’s processes of knowledge construction as he played a conceptually-integrated digital game (SURGE Next) designed to support learning about Newtonian mechanics. Grounded in the Knowledge In Pieces framework of conceptual change (A. diSessa, 1993), we analyze the processes through which the student, Jamal, developed an expert-like understanding of deflections, a phenomenon that has been previously identified as challenging to understand for novice physics learners. We also explore the key characteristics of SURGE Next supporting these conceptual change processes. Our analysis shows that Jamal’s learning involved iterative refinement of his conceptual understanding through distributed encoding (A. diSessa, 1993). That is, as Jamal advanced through the game levels in SURGE Next, he developed a progressively more distributed sense of mechanism (A. diSessa, 1993) and was able to identify and operationalize the roles of the direction and magnitude of an object’s initial (or previous) velocity in determining the velocity resulting from the application of a new impulse. We also discuss the methodological and design implications of our findings for future research on digital games for learning.     

Using the PSSC Laboratory Course in the First Year of College

Summaries

English

In the physical sciences, laboratory instruction has always taken place alongside classroom instruction. Undergraduate physics education has been a mixture of theoretical and experimental instruction, where the theoretical part plays the dominant role. The freshman laboratory holds a prominent role because it is the place where the student acquires the skills and attitudes that will help him understand the advanced subjects.

The freshman laboratory is particularly important in countrieswhere the student's instruction in experimentation is practically non‐existent at the secondary‐school level. In these cases, where the freshman laboratory is the student's first exposure to experimental science, we are particularly concerned that together with learning the ‘right’ things the student should develop the ‘right’ attitudes; as the ‘right’ attitudes can encourage curiosity and motivation for lifelong learning.     

Science and religion in a high school physics class: revisiting the source materials of “The interaction of scientific and religious discourses”

In and with this text, I introduce the Forum that centers around a series of essays written by a high school student and an interview with his teacher all collected as part of a larger study about students’ discourses with respect to (nature of) science, learning, and knowing. I provide a brief review of the original findings, which had been published in a study co-authored by the student and myself, his physics teacher.     

Applications of augmented reality-based natural interactive learning in magnetic field instruction

Educators must address several challenges inherent to the instruction of scientific disciplines such as physics -- expensive or insufficient laboratory equipment, equipment error, difficulty in simulating certain experimental conditions. Augmented reality (AR) can be a promising approach to address these challenges. In this paper, we discuss the design and implementation of an AR and motion-sensing learning technology that teaches magnetic fields in a junior high school physics course. The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of using natural interaction on students’ physics learning and deep understanding compared to traditional learning tools. The 38 eighth graders who participated in this study were assigned to either an experimental group or a control group. Analysis of the results shows that the AR-based motion-sensing software can improve students’ learning attitude and learning outcome. This study provides a case for the application of AR technology in secondary physics education.     

Structured Collaboration versus Individual Learning in Solving Physics Problems

The research issue in this study is how to structure collaborative learning so that it improves solving physics problems more than individual learning. Structured collaborative learning has been compared with individual learning environments with Schoenfeld’s problem‐solving episodes. Students took a pre‐test and a post‐test and had the opportunity to solve six physics problems. Ninety‐nine students from a secondary school in Shanghai participated in the study. Students who learnt to solve problems in collaboration and students who learnt to solve problems individually with hints improved their problem‐solving skills compared with those who learnt to solve the problems individually without hints. However, it was hard to discern an extra effect for students working collaboratively with hints—although we observed these students working in a more structured way than those in the other groups. We discuss ways to further investigate effective collaborative processes for solving physics problems.     

Foundation degree learning: an educational journey of personal development

The foundation degree is an intermediate-level qualification designed to widen participation in higher education while providing work-related skills and knowledge. It has a vocational focus and a pedagogic approach that integrates academic and work-based learning. Research into opportunities and the process of learning within foundation degrees is limited, particularly that which looks in depth at personal development occurring within these courses. This study contributes to the literature in this area, reporting on the results of a case study of the foundation degree in medicines management (University of Portsmouth). A key finding of this work was that knowledge was gained within a community of practice, and led to students’ development as individuals. Motivation, learning to learn and guidance and feedback, alongside peer learning within the course, were central aspects of this process. The learning and personal development taking place resulted in increased awareness, confidence and empowerment in students, which was reported to influence their work and personal lives. However, the development of specialist work-related skills and knowledge was found to be limited, questioning the fitness for purpose of the course researched. While key aspects of the subject investigated have been described in this work, further research is needed to understand this complex phenomenon.     

The interaction of learning environments and student discourse about knowing,learning, and the nature of science: Two longitudinal case studies

This is one of a series of studies conducted by a high school physics teacher, who used constructivist referents to plan and enact the curriculum, and to understand and improve the learning environment in his physics classes. Data were collected in the course of a two-year physics course including (a) repeated administrations of a classroom learning environment survey, (b) written essays on the topics of knowing, learning, and classroom learning environment, and (c) interviews. While there was a general trend for students to adopt more constructivist views of knowing and learning, there was also a small number who resisted to adapt to the constructivist learning environment in their physics course. Two case studies of individual students are used to illustrate the interactions of the learning environment, student understanding of scientific knowledge, and the nature of science, and students' views of their own learning.     

Towards a theory of mathematics homework as a social practice

This article presents a theoretical conceptualization of mathematics homework as a social practice. Rather than considering homework as a task or an artifact, this approach frames homework in terms of the social contexts in which students participate and how students participate in those contexts. This perspective has long been suggested by homework researchers but has not been developed as a framework for understanding homework. Drawing from Wenger’s (1998) social theory of learning and research grounded in sociocultural theory, this conceptualization makes central meaning making and identity development, and puts forth meaning and identity as lenses for understanding students’ participation in the practice of mathematics homework. To further develop this conceptualization of homework, I draw on data from an ethnographic study of the role and meaning of mathematics homework in the lives of middle school students. Case studies of two students are presented to demonstrate the relationships among the meaning of homework, students’ identities, and their participation in the practice of homework. One student’s experiences support him in identifying as a capable mathematics student who is bound for continued academic success through high school to college. Thus, he comes to take on mathematics homework as a means to learn and succeed. The other student’s experiences support him in building an identity that leads him to reject homework. This conceptualization of homework and the case study data have implications for the practice of homework and for theories of students’ motivational dispositions in the context of mathematics homework and learning in general.     

In the physics class: university physics students’ enactment of class and gender in the context of laboratory work

This article explores how the doing of social class and gender can intersect with the learning of science, through case studies of two male, working-class university students’ constitutions of identities as physics students. In doing so, I challenge the taken-for-granted notion that male physics students have an unproblematic relation to their chosen discipline, and nuance the picture of how working-class students relate to higher education by the explicit focus on one disciplinary culture. Working from the perspective of situated learning theory, the interviews with the two male students were analysed for how they negotiated the practice of the physics student laboratory and their own classed and gendered participation in this practice. By drawing on the heterogeneity of the practice of physics the two students were able to use the practical and technological aspects of physics as a gateway into the discipline. However, this is not to say that their participation in physics was completely frictionless. The students were both engaged in a continuous negotiation of how skills they had learned to value in the background may or may not be compatible with the ones they perceived to be valued in the university physicist community.     

Partners in Learning: A Grounded Theory Study of Relational Practice between Master’s Students and Professors

Meaningful academic relationships between adult master’s students and their professors can both deepen students’ learning and serve as a regenerating force for professors. This study employed grounded theory methods to explore the question, “What goes on in relational practice between master’s students and professors?” I interviewed 10 matched pairs of recent alumni and professors who identified as having “a meaningful academic relationship”. Dimensional analysis surfaced two core dimensions: reconstructing and regenerating. In reconstructing, the students’ core dimension reveals the student experience of reconstructing, or understanding more deeply, theory or one’s self. In the case of regenerating, the professor’s core dimension identifies the professors’ experience of “giving back” through their teaching and extending their professional reach by training others. These experiences serve to reinvigorate professors over the course of their careers. In addition, findings in this study resonate with sensitizing concepts including relational cultural theory and relational practice. Finally, the analysis surfaced evidence supporting authentic teaching concepts and connected these concepts to faculty and student learning partnerships.