Lillian C. McDermott
62
History
3/15/10
Arnold’s attempts to share his insights on student learning with our colleagues
were often not successful.
I soon realized that to convince physics instructors about the
low level of their students’ understanding, it is not sufficient to draw on interactions with a
few students or on personal teaching experience.
If students do not understand, a common
faculty reaction is that they are not smart enough or that the lectures are not clear.
Anecdotal examples are inadequate for making a strong case.
If, instead, one can
document with reproducible evidence that certain conceptual and reasoning difficulties are
common among students and that specific instructional strategies are often effective in
addressing these difficulties, the likelihood of positive impact on instruction increases.
A.
Growth of Discipline-based Research in Physics Education
In our group’s courses for K-12 teachers and underprepared students, we had many
opportunities to interact with individuals and small groups as they worked through
Physics
by Inquiry
.
In a
Guest Editorial
in
AJP,
I presented some insights from history, teaching
experience, and research that support the need for intensive preparation of teachers in both
the content and process of physics.
159
During our large-scale investigations in the
introductory course, we identified many of the same conceptual and reasoning difficulties
that we had found among teachers and underprepared students.
Similar instructional
strategies worked well with all of these populations.
These findings suggested that
systematic research on student learning could provide a sound basis for cumulative
improvement in instruction.
The results have been stable, reproducible, and generalizable
and thus a resource for all instructors, regardless of whether they use our curriculum.
We take a constructivist view of how scientific knowledge is acquired,
i.e.,
individuals must actively engage in the process of constructing concepts in order to be
able to apply them.
Meaningful learning, which connotes the ability to interpret and use
knowledge in situations not identical to those in which it was initially acquired, requires
deep mental engagement.
In a typical introductory course, little attention is paid to the
development of scientific reasoning skills.
This is the last physics course most students
take, but even majors would benefit from practice in inductive and deductive thinking.
159
L.C. McDermott, “Editorial: Preparing K-12 teachers in physics:
Insights from history, experience, an
research,
Am. J. Phys.,
74
(9), 758 (2006).
See Ref. 59 for supporting evidence.
Lillian C. McDermott
63
History
3/15/10
Physics provides an excellent context in which to develop reasoning ability.
However, in order to be able to construct a logically sound chain of reasoning, it is
necessary to understand the material in depth.
The likelihood that this will occur would be
much greater if coverage were not so large nor pace so rapid.
Instead of learning physics,
they learn
about
physics, a distinction that is not clear to many.
It may be difficult to
determine the proper balance between teaching what students can understand and what
physicists find exciting.
What should not be as difficult to decide, however, is the
desirability of helping students develop scientific reasoning skills.
There are many factors that may affect learning in physics (
e.g.
, motivation,
gender, and socio-economic background) that our group does not examine.
Our research
is not only
discipline-based;
it is also
discipline-specific.
We try to determine how well
students understand specific concepts and can do the reasoning required to apply them.
We have found that an effective way to match teaching to learning is through careful
investigation, topic by topic.
In
A View from Physics
, I commented that
“many of the difficulties students encounter in learning physics are a consequence
of the nature of the material and must be addressed in that context.
Other
difficulties that may cut across subject matter boundaries are also often best treated
in the same way since the ability to transfer reasoning skills from one context to
another seems to develop slowly.
Our knowledge about how students think is not
sufficiently complete to provide a firm foundation for constructing useful theories
of general applicability.
Thus it seems prudent for the present to continue
acquiring data rich in conceptual detail and to concentrate on developing
instructional strategies that are demonstrably effective for specific content.”
160
The idea expressed in the last sentence has been embedded in all the curriculum
that we develop.
Promoting the transfer of complex reasoning skills, however, remains
a challenge.
161
To the extent that these are transferable,
PbI
and the tutorials can help
students (and teachers) develop ability in:
160
See p. 26 in Ref. 53 and also P.R.L. Heron, “Empirical investigations of learning and teaching, part I:
Examining and interpreting student thinking,”
Proc. of the International School of Physics
“E. Fermi,”
Course CLVI, ed. by E.F. Redish and M. Vicentini (IOS Press, Amsterdam, 2004), pp. 341-350.
161
L. Bao
et al
., “Learning and scientific reasoning,”
Science
319
, 586 (2009) and “Learning of
content knowledge and development of scientific reasoning ability: A cross-cultural comparison,”
Am. J. Phys.
77
(12), 1118 (2009).
The lack of reasoning skills among undergraduate students was
See also J.W. McKinnon and J.W. Renner, “Are colleges concerned with intellectual
development?”
Am. J. Phys.
71
(9), 1047 (1971).
