This paper reports on an investigation that explored first year mainstream physics students’ idea... more This paper reports on an investigation that explored first year mainstream physics students’ ideas about measureme nt and the procedures they use for analysing data in the physics laboratory. Recent work in the area of students’ understanding of experimental evidence has led to a model of student thinking about dispersion in data being developed, which has been termed the “point” and “set” paradigms (Allie et al. 1998; Allie et al. 2001; Buffler et al. 2001; Lubben et al . 2001). The point and set paradigmatic model was used to investigate the development of students’ ideas by analysing written responses given to a writt en instrument (probes) before and after the first year laboratory curriculum. Students using the point paradigm drew conclusions about the measurand directly from individual data points and used single values when comparing data sets. Those that used the s et paradigm drew conclusions from the properties of the distribution constructed from the whole ensemble of available data. Individual student’s consistency of use of these paradigms across the set of probes was investigated. The students’ application of t he more routine aspects of data collection and analysis was advanced. However, they found it difficult to come to terms with the deeper aspects that underlie experimentation.
Contexts, footholds and sense-making in DC circuits Physics Education Research Conference, Philad... more Contexts, footholds and sense-making in DC circuits Physics Education Research Conference, Philadelphia, PA, 1-2 August 2012
This is part of a broader investigation, describes the sense-making episodes of student’s engagem... more This is part of a broader investigation, describes the sense-making episodes of student’s engagement with a task in DC circuits. We investigated the variation of student responses using an open DC circuit. The instrument, ACQ, consisted of 8 questions, each comprised of forced choice responses and free written responses. The forced choice responses showed that the student responses are context dependent and the free written responses identified the reasons and foothold ideas behind these variations at a fine-grained level. The results of personal interviews suggest that, student’s sense-making attempt is the driving force behind the contextual variations in their responses. We present such an episode from one of the eight interviews.
2018 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings, 2019
The present work is part of a broad programme aimed at understanding how students think about dat... more The present work is part of a broad programme aimed at understanding how students think about data obtained from measurement, including measurement uncertainty, at a more fine-grained level than that obtained from the Physics Measurement Questionnaire. More specifically, to what extent do measured student shifts from a point to a set paradigm come about due to actual conceptual change or are they the result of recognizing familiar situations that can successfully be processed according to appropriate prescriptions. In order to probe these finer grained aspects of understanding a process of developing a suitable questionnaire was initiated. The first phase of the process involved piloting individual, specific questions. The present paper will discuss the questions that were developed and piloted with a group of students after an introductory lab course. The focus of the paper will be on the level of informativeness of the responses that were obtained.
Having an appreciation for astronomical scale is essential for understanding the foundations of a... more Having an appreciation for astronomical scale is essential for understanding the foundations of astronomy. However, a key obstacle in developing this understanding is the lack of direct ways to acquire this knowledge. Personal experience may even be detrimental, given that our direct experience is of the Earth as something extremely large, whereas stars, for example, appear as tiny pinpricks of light. As a first step to address this issue, it is necessary to assess people’s knowledge of astronomical scale to identify common misconceptions and evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions. Previous instruments have generally only included a few questions about scale—mostly through multiple choice—limiting the number of objects simultaneously probed to three and often not probing all possible rankings. To measure people’s knowledge of astronomical scale, we developed an instrument that allows for easy collection, analysis and presentation of data ranking multiple astronomica...
Measurements have been made of the neutron spectrum from the spontaneous fission of 252cf in the ... more Measurements have been made of the neutron spectrum from the spontaneous fission of 252cf in the restframe of the fragment by simultaneous observation of the neutron time-of-flig ht
Black South African students who transfer from "Historically Black Universities" to the National ... more Black South African students who transfer from "Historically Black Universities" to the National Graduate Program in Astrophysics and Space Science at the University of Cape Town often struggle academically. While our previous studies focused on student epistemology and went some way towards understanding student under-performance it became clear that broader socio-cultural and systemic issues were playing critical roles. Using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as a theoretical perspective we (a) characterized the broader context as an Activity System and (b) identified the four main types of systemic contradictions as proposed by the theory.
We report on a study with first year university physics students in which we investigated the eff... more We report on a study with first year university physics students in which we investigated the effect on student responses when small contextual changes were made to the presentation of an "open circuit". The eight question instrument that we designed included representational, linguistic and circuit element variations. Our findings indicate that while the changes might appear trivial they significantly affect the way in which students respond.
Page 1. 1 Paper presented at the 4th International Conference of the European Science Education R... more Page 1. 1 Paper presented at the 4th International Conference of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA), Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, 19-23 August 2003 Evaluation of a research-based curriculum for teaching ...
2014 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings, 2015
The acquisition metaphor of learning is often used by teachers of physics: Students are thought t... more The acquisition metaphor of learning is often used by teachers of physics: Students are thought to acquire a particular concept and then transfer this concept to new contexts. For example, one might argue that students acquire the mathematical concept of "vector addition" and then apply it in different physical contexts. In this study, 200 freshmen taking an introductory physics course were asked to calculate total force, total displacement and total momentum in simple contexts involving vector addition at right angles. Another similar group of students were asked to calculate net force, net displacement, and net momentum. When asked to calculate the "net" quantity, students did significantly better than when asked to calculate the "total" quantity. Students did significantly worse when adding momenta as opposed to adding forces or displacements. These results are inconsistent with a basic "acquisition-transfer" perspective of learning. An analysis of subsequent interviews and questionnaires was also conducted.
Density is an important, multifaceted concept that occurs at many levels of physics education. Pr... more Density is an important, multifaceted concept that occurs at many levels of physics education. Previous research has shown that a primary instantiation of the concept, mass density, is not well understood by high school or university students. This study seeks to determine how students understand the broad concept of density, and whether particular aspects of their understanding are helpful in structuring the concept of charge density. Qualitative data were gathered in the form of questionnaires distributed to 172 freshmen comprising three different academic groups. Broad, open ended questions prompted for responses involving free writing and drawn diagrams. The data were analysed by an approach suggested by Grounded Theory. Using the theoretical lens of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, six underlying (foothold) concepts were identified in terms of which density was conceptualised: 'filled container'; 'packing'; 'weight/heaviness'; 'intensive property'; 'floating/sinking'; 'impenetrability/solidity'. The foothold concept of 'packing' proved to be the most productive for conceptualising 'charge density'.
We report on research carried out to improve teaching and student engagement in the introductory ... more We report on research carried out to improve teaching and student engagement in the introductory astronomy course at the University of Cape Town. This course is taken by a diverse range of students, including many from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. We describe the development of an instrument, the Introductory Astronomy Questionnaire (IAQ), which we administered as pre- and post-tests to students enrolled in the course. The instrument comprised a small number of questions which probed three areas of interest: student motivation and expectations, astronomy content, and worldview. Amongst our findings were that learning gains were made in several conceptual areas, and that students appeared to develop a more nuanced view of the nature of astronomy. There was some evidence that the course had a positive impact on students' worldviews, particularly their attitudes towards science. We also identified a promising predictor of course success that could in future be used to i...
This paper reports the development of an instrument for assessing writing-intensive laboratory re... more This paper reports the development of an instrument for assessing writing-intensive laboratory reports in undergraduate physics. Writing-intensive reports combine the aspects of laboratory experimentation and written communication and involve a number of distinct facets which have to be taken into account during assessment. At one level, there are features that pertain to the technicalities and conventions of the science involved as well as the technical features of language use, while at another level, there are features that pertain to the report as an exercise in meaningful communication. In an attempt to take cognisance of all these aspects, the coherence of the report was used as an important concept in developing the instrument. The instrument was also designed so that it could be used by physics tutors, both staff and post-graduate students, who are generally more familiar with assessing reports on the basis of the technical aspects of scientific procedure only, but might jud...
Abstract. The majority of “special access ” students at the University of Cape Town are second la... more Abstract. The majority of “special access ” students at the University of Cape Town are second language English speakers for whom reading the physics textbook is daunting. As a strategy to encourage meaningful engagement with the text, students wrote textbook summaries due the day material was covered in class. The summaries were returned, and they could bring them or re-write them for use during their examinations. A framework was developed to analyze the summaries based on Waywood, defining three cognitive levels seen in mathematics journaling: recounting, summarizing, and dialoging. This framework was refined, expanded, and tested. Interviews with students were conducted for their views on summary writing and survey questions were included on their final exams. The study was carried out in the 2007 spring semester of the “Foundation Physics Course, ” a component of the special access program.
Abstract. Experimentation appears to be an ideal context in which several key aspects of scientif... more Abstract. Experimentation appears to be an ideal context in which several key aspects of scientific thinking can be addressed. However, the traditional freshman laboratory does not appear to be successful in doing so. This paper argues that this has much to do with the way in which tasks are formulated. We propose a simple descriptive model based on the notion of the “idea space ” that can be used to analyze task formulation that can promote meaningful critical thinking. A number of factors that affect the size of the idea space are discussed, such as conceptual metaphor and the perceived nature of questioning from a socio-cultural perspective, described in terms of knowledge and information flow.
23 Traditionally physics laboratory courses at the freshman level have aimed to demonstrate vario... more 23 Traditionally physics laboratory courses at the freshman level have aimed to demonstrate various principles of physics introduced in lectures. Experiments tend to be quantitative in nature with experimental and data analysis techniques interwoven as distinct strands of the laboratory course.1 It is often assumed that, in this way, students will end up with an understanding of the nature of measurement and experimentation. Recent research studies have, however, questioned this assumption.2,3 They have pointed to the fact that freshmen who have completed physics laboratory courses are often able to demonstrate mastery of the mechanistic techniques (e.g., calculating means and standard deviations, fitting straight lines, etc.) but lack an appreciation of the nature of scientific evidence, in particular the central role of uncertainty in experimental measurement. We believe that the probabilistic approach to data analysis, as advocated by the International Organization for Standardiz...
A recoil neutron spectrometer based on NE230 deuterated liquid scintillator (25 mm diameter × 25 ... more A recoil neutron spectrometer based on NE230 deuterated liquid scintillator (25 mm diameter × 25 mm) has been used to investigate neutron energy spectra of scattered neutrons at positions in and near to the beam axis in a water phantom irradiated by a quasi-monoenergetic 64 MeV neutron beam. An important feature of the spectrometer is that it is able to discriminate against backgrounds that can arise from n-p scattering in the water. Neutron energy spectra are obtained from measurements of pulse height spectra by the NE230 spectrometer using the Bayesian unfolding code MAXED. The experimentally measured energy spectra are compared with spectra calculated by Monte Carlo simulation using the code MCNPX.
We report on a study with 60 first year physics students in which we made contextual changes to a... more We report on a study with 60 first year physics students in which we made contextual changes to an “open circuit” in order to measure the effect of such changes to student’s responses. The 8 question instrument that we designed included representational, linguistic and (circuit) elemental variations. Our findings indicate that while the changes might appear trivial to an expert they significantly affect the way in which students respond.
This paper reports on an investigation that explored first year mainstream physics students’ idea... more This paper reports on an investigation that explored first year mainstream physics students’ ideas about measureme nt and the procedures they use for analysing data in the physics laboratory. Recent work in the area of students’ understanding of experimental evidence has led to a model of student thinking about dispersion in data being developed, which has been termed the “point” and “set” paradigms (Allie et al. 1998; Allie et al. 2001; Buffler et al. 2001; Lubben et al . 2001). The point and set paradigmatic model was used to investigate the development of students’ ideas by analysing written responses given to a writt en instrument (probes) before and after the first year laboratory curriculum. Students using the point paradigm drew conclusions about the measurand directly from individual data points and used single values when comparing data sets. Those that used the s et paradigm drew conclusions from the properties of the distribution constructed from the whole ensemble of available data. Individual student’s consistency of use of these paradigms across the set of probes was investigated. The students’ application of t he more routine aspects of data collection and analysis was advanced. However, they found it difficult to come to terms with the deeper aspects that underlie experimentation.
Contexts, footholds and sense-making in DC circuits Physics Education Research Conference, Philad... more Contexts, footholds and sense-making in DC circuits Physics Education Research Conference, Philadelphia, PA, 1-2 August 2012
This is part of a broader investigation, describes the sense-making episodes of student’s engagem... more This is part of a broader investigation, describes the sense-making episodes of student’s engagement with a task in DC circuits. We investigated the variation of student responses using an open DC circuit. The instrument, ACQ, consisted of 8 questions, each comprised of forced choice responses and free written responses. The forced choice responses showed that the student responses are context dependent and the free written responses identified the reasons and foothold ideas behind these variations at a fine-grained level. The results of personal interviews suggest that, student’s sense-making attempt is the driving force behind the contextual variations in their responses. We present such an episode from one of the eight interviews.
2018 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings, 2019
The present work is part of a broad programme aimed at understanding how students think about dat... more The present work is part of a broad programme aimed at understanding how students think about data obtained from measurement, including measurement uncertainty, at a more fine-grained level than that obtained from the Physics Measurement Questionnaire. More specifically, to what extent do measured student shifts from a point to a set paradigm come about due to actual conceptual change or are they the result of recognizing familiar situations that can successfully be processed according to appropriate prescriptions. In order to probe these finer grained aspects of understanding a process of developing a suitable questionnaire was initiated. The first phase of the process involved piloting individual, specific questions. The present paper will discuss the questions that were developed and piloted with a group of students after an introductory lab course. The focus of the paper will be on the level of informativeness of the responses that were obtained.
Having an appreciation for astronomical scale is essential for understanding the foundations of a... more Having an appreciation for astronomical scale is essential for understanding the foundations of astronomy. However, a key obstacle in developing this understanding is the lack of direct ways to acquire this knowledge. Personal experience may even be detrimental, given that our direct experience is of the Earth as something extremely large, whereas stars, for example, appear as tiny pinpricks of light. As a first step to address this issue, it is necessary to assess people’s knowledge of astronomical scale to identify common misconceptions and evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions. Previous instruments have generally only included a few questions about scale—mostly through multiple choice—limiting the number of objects simultaneously probed to three and often not probing all possible rankings. To measure people’s knowledge of astronomical scale, we developed an instrument that allows for easy collection, analysis and presentation of data ranking multiple astronomica...
Measurements have been made of the neutron spectrum from the spontaneous fission of 252cf in the ... more Measurements have been made of the neutron spectrum from the spontaneous fission of 252cf in the restframe of the fragment by simultaneous observation of the neutron time-of-flig ht
Black South African students who transfer from "Historically Black Universities" to the National ... more Black South African students who transfer from "Historically Black Universities" to the National Graduate Program in Astrophysics and Space Science at the University of Cape Town often struggle academically. While our previous studies focused on student epistemology and went some way towards understanding student under-performance it became clear that broader socio-cultural and systemic issues were playing critical roles. Using Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as a theoretical perspective we (a) characterized the broader context as an Activity System and (b) identified the four main types of systemic contradictions as proposed by the theory.
We report on a study with first year university physics students in which we investigated the eff... more We report on a study with first year university physics students in which we investigated the effect on student responses when small contextual changes were made to the presentation of an "open circuit". The eight question instrument that we designed included representational, linguistic and circuit element variations. Our findings indicate that while the changes might appear trivial they significantly affect the way in which students respond.
Page 1. 1 Paper presented at the 4th International Conference of the European Science Education R... more Page 1. 1 Paper presented at the 4th International Conference of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA), Noordwijkerhout, The Netherlands, 19-23 August 2003 Evaluation of a research-based curriculum for teaching ...
2014 Physics Education Research Conference Proceedings, 2015
The acquisition metaphor of learning is often used by teachers of physics: Students are thought t... more The acquisition metaphor of learning is often used by teachers of physics: Students are thought to acquire a particular concept and then transfer this concept to new contexts. For example, one might argue that students acquire the mathematical concept of "vector addition" and then apply it in different physical contexts. In this study, 200 freshmen taking an introductory physics course were asked to calculate total force, total displacement and total momentum in simple contexts involving vector addition at right angles. Another similar group of students were asked to calculate net force, net displacement, and net momentum. When asked to calculate the "net" quantity, students did significantly better than when asked to calculate the "total" quantity. Students did significantly worse when adding momenta as opposed to adding forces or displacements. These results are inconsistent with a basic "acquisition-transfer" perspective of learning. An analysis of subsequent interviews and questionnaires was also conducted.
Density is an important, multifaceted concept that occurs at many levels of physics education. Pr... more Density is an important, multifaceted concept that occurs at many levels of physics education. Previous research has shown that a primary instantiation of the concept, mass density, is not well understood by high school or university students. This study seeks to determine how students understand the broad concept of density, and whether particular aspects of their understanding are helpful in structuring the concept of charge density. Qualitative data were gathered in the form of questionnaires distributed to 172 freshmen comprising three different academic groups. Broad, open ended questions prompted for responses involving free writing and drawn diagrams. The data were analysed by an approach suggested by Grounded Theory. Using the theoretical lens of Conceptual Metaphor Theory, six underlying (foothold) concepts were identified in terms of which density was conceptualised: 'filled container'; 'packing'; 'weight/heaviness'; 'intensive property'; 'floating/sinking'; 'impenetrability/solidity'. The foothold concept of 'packing' proved to be the most productive for conceptualising 'charge density'.
We report on research carried out to improve teaching and student engagement in the introductory ... more We report on research carried out to improve teaching and student engagement in the introductory astronomy course at the University of Cape Town. This course is taken by a diverse range of students, including many from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. We describe the development of an instrument, the Introductory Astronomy Questionnaire (IAQ), which we administered as pre- and post-tests to students enrolled in the course. The instrument comprised a small number of questions which probed three areas of interest: student motivation and expectations, astronomy content, and worldview. Amongst our findings were that learning gains were made in several conceptual areas, and that students appeared to develop a more nuanced view of the nature of astronomy. There was some evidence that the course had a positive impact on students' worldviews, particularly their attitudes towards science. We also identified a promising predictor of course success that could in future be used to i...
This paper reports the development of an instrument for assessing writing-intensive laboratory re... more This paper reports the development of an instrument for assessing writing-intensive laboratory reports in undergraduate physics. Writing-intensive reports combine the aspects of laboratory experimentation and written communication and involve a number of distinct facets which have to be taken into account during assessment. At one level, there are features that pertain to the technicalities and conventions of the science involved as well as the technical features of language use, while at another level, there are features that pertain to the report as an exercise in meaningful communication. In an attempt to take cognisance of all these aspects, the coherence of the report was used as an important concept in developing the instrument. The instrument was also designed so that it could be used by physics tutors, both staff and post-graduate students, who are generally more familiar with assessing reports on the basis of the technical aspects of scientific procedure only, but might jud...
Abstract. The majority of “special access ” students at the University of Cape Town are second la... more Abstract. The majority of “special access ” students at the University of Cape Town are second language English speakers for whom reading the physics textbook is daunting. As a strategy to encourage meaningful engagement with the text, students wrote textbook summaries due the day material was covered in class. The summaries were returned, and they could bring them or re-write them for use during their examinations. A framework was developed to analyze the summaries based on Waywood, defining three cognitive levels seen in mathematics journaling: recounting, summarizing, and dialoging. This framework was refined, expanded, and tested. Interviews with students were conducted for their views on summary writing and survey questions were included on their final exams. The study was carried out in the 2007 spring semester of the “Foundation Physics Course, ” a component of the special access program.
Abstract. Experimentation appears to be an ideal context in which several key aspects of scientif... more Abstract. Experimentation appears to be an ideal context in which several key aspects of scientific thinking can be addressed. However, the traditional freshman laboratory does not appear to be successful in doing so. This paper argues that this has much to do with the way in which tasks are formulated. We propose a simple descriptive model based on the notion of the “idea space ” that can be used to analyze task formulation that can promote meaningful critical thinking. A number of factors that affect the size of the idea space are discussed, such as conceptual metaphor and the perceived nature of questioning from a socio-cultural perspective, described in terms of knowledge and information flow.
23 Traditionally physics laboratory courses at the freshman level have aimed to demonstrate vario... more 23 Traditionally physics laboratory courses at the freshman level have aimed to demonstrate various principles of physics introduced in lectures. Experiments tend to be quantitative in nature with experimental and data analysis techniques interwoven as distinct strands of the laboratory course.1 It is often assumed that, in this way, students will end up with an understanding of the nature of measurement and experimentation. Recent research studies have, however, questioned this assumption.2,3 They have pointed to the fact that freshmen who have completed physics laboratory courses are often able to demonstrate mastery of the mechanistic techniques (e.g., calculating means and standard deviations, fitting straight lines, etc.) but lack an appreciation of the nature of scientific evidence, in particular the central role of uncertainty in experimental measurement. We believe that the probabilistic approach to data analysis, as advocated by the International Organization for Standardiz...
A recoil neutron spectrometer based on NE230 deuterated liquid scintillator (25 mm diameter × 25 ... more A recoil neutron spectrometer based on NE230 deuterated liquid scintillator (25 mm diameter × 25 mm) has been used to investigate neutron energy spectra of scattered neutrons at positions in and near to the beam axis in a water phantom irradiated by a quasi-monoenergetic 64 MeV neutron beam. An important feature of the spectrometer is that it is able to discriminate against backgrounds that can arise from n-p scattering in the water. Neutron energy spectra are obtained from measurements of pulse height spectra by the NE230 spectrometer using the Bayesian unfolding code MAXED. The experimentally measured energy spectra are compared with spectra calculated by Monte Carlo simulation using the code MCNPX.
We report on a study with 60 first year physics students in which we made contextual changes to a... more We report on a study with 60 first year physics students in which we made contextual changes to an “open circuit” in order to measure the effect of such changes to student’s responses. The 8 question instrument that we designed included representational, linguistic and (circuit) elemental variations. Our findings indicate that while the changes might appear trivial to an expert they significantly affect the way in which students respond.
Uploads
Papers by Saalih Allie