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Origin of the universe: Speech by teacher graduates in physics
Get PDFThis presentation reports on work in the context of a Master's thesis whose research aims were to investigate and analyze the discourse of teachers, graduated in physics, on the theme "origin of the Universe", aiming at increased understanding of the processes of teacher training and their practice in the classroom regarding this subject. The data were collected through interviews with teachers who graduated from a physics course at the same public university, with the same curriculum.
The research included questioning about the autonomy of teachers graduated in Physics to approach the theme "origin of the Universe" in the classroom, both in relation to the teacher's knowledge on the subject and in relation to the possible epistemological and cultural conflicts that may arise with the discussion. The semi-structured interviews were conducted through open questions that guided the dialogue in aspects of teacher training and practice.
The theoretical premise of the research was based on authors who are a reference in the discussion of the nature of science, the most accepted theories about the origin of the Universe, and areas of knowledge and teacher training and practice (Bock et al., 1999; CERN, 2022; El-Hani & Bizzo, 1999; Freire, 1996; Sepulveda & El-Hani, 2004; Souza, 2007). The data analysis was performed based on the Pecheutian Discourse Analysis theory (Orlandi, 2015).
The analysis of the interviewed teachers’ discourse allowed conclusions that are directly related to the research objectives. Most teachers showed a lack of approach to the theme “origin of the Universe” in their academic training, since they consider the approach to the topic in Basic Education interesting, and would need specific secondary training to plan the discussion with their students. In addition, it was possible to identify in the conversations with most teachers interviewed, the imminence of cultural and epistemological conflict in relation to the positioning of students, teachers and educational institutions, demonstrating insecurity in approaching the topic due to lack of knowledge and the need for skills that would provide conflict management.
From the inferences on the interviewees' discourse, we can identify the search for impartiality of the teachers in the discussion of the theme and the care for the approach of different theories for the origin of the Universe, demonstrating the intention to allow space for different personal manifestations of the students. It is also worth mentioning the preference of most teachers for the approach of the theme focused on the epistemological discussion of science, and not just a specific scientific study on the physical aspects of the origin of the Universe.
REFERENCES
Bock, A. M. B. Furtado, O. Teixeira, M. L. T. (1999). Psicologias: uma introdução ao estudo de psicologia. Editora Saraiva, ed. 13, 1999.
CERN (2022). Disponível em:<https://home.cern/>. Acesso em: Nov. 2022.
El-Hani, C. N. Bizzo, N. (1999). Formas de construtivismo: Teoria da mudança conceitual e construtivismo contextual. In: Moreira, M. A. & Ostermann, F. (Orgs.) Atas do II Encontro Nacional de Pesquisa em Educação em Ciências. Porto Alegre: ABRAPEC.
Freire, P. (1996). Pedagogia da autonomia: saberes necessários à prática educativa. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra.
Orlandi, E. P. (2015). Análise de Discurso: Princípios & Procedimentos (12th ed.). Campinas: Pontes.
Sepulveda, C. El-Hani, C. N. (2004). Quando visões de mundo se encontram: religião e ciência na trajetória de formação de alunos protestantes de uma licenciatura em ciências biológicas. Investigações em Ensino de Ciências, v. 9(2), p. 137-175.
Souza, M. A. (2007). Criação e evolução: em diálogo com Teilhard de Chardin. Dissertação (Pós-graduação). Faculdade de Teologia/PUC. Porto Alegre
The study of grade eleven students' representations of electricity through model-based inquiry
No full textGenerally, students find learning electricity topics difficult. Students struggle to construct their own model of learning because many of the interactions are invisible, it is an abstract and very complicated concept. Multi-representations are used as tools to help students construct representations to connect their understanding of the concept, rather than memorizing definitions and presenting what they have learned. We are presenting research that aimed to study grade 11 students' ability to construct representations of electricity through model-based inquiry. The action research was implemented in this study with two action research loops to improve students' representations. The first Loop consisted of Ohm's law, electric resistivity, conductivity, and resistor connection. The second loop consisted of electrical energy and potential difference, electrical energy, electric power, and battery connection. The representations of students were collected after loop one and loop two of the implementation. The students' representations were interpreted and grouped into five levels based on Kozma and Russell (1997) consisting of 1) Representation as Depiction 2) Early Symbolic Skills 3) Syntactic Use of Formal Representations 4) Semantic Use of Formal Representations 5) Reflective Rhetorical Use of Representations. The grouping of students' representation was according to the propriety of each answer using scoring criteria based on Jaber and Boujaoude (2012), and Wang (2007), consisting of fair, good, and very good.
The results showed that students’ representations of electricity in loop one were as follows: 53.125% of students' representations were fair and 46.875% were good at level II on Ohm's law; 37.5% of students' representations were fair, 9.375% were good and 53.125% were very good at level II on electric resistivity and electric conductivity; 59.375% of students' representations were fair, 6.25% were good and 34.375% were very good at level II on resistor connection. The results showed that students’ representations of electricity in loop two were as follows:46.875% of students’ representations were fair, 31.25% were good and 21.875% were very good at level III on electrical energy and potential difference; 53.125% of students' representations were fair, 25% were good at level III and 21.875% were very good at level III on electrical energy and electric power; 53.125% of students' representations were fair, 15.625% were good at level III and 31.25% were very good at level IV on battery connection. The results show that students’ representations were improved by model-based inquiry. Students’ representations were improved from loop 1 to loop 2 of the action research.
We concluded that model-based inquiry is an alternative way that helps physics teachers to reduce learning difficulty. Teachers should design activities to facilitate students to express and transfer representation coherently and correctly.
REFERENCES
Jaber L, & Boujaoude S. (2012). A Macro–Micro–Symbolic Teaching to Promote Relational Understanding of Chemical Reactions. International Journal of Science Education, 34(7), 973 – 998.
Kozma R, & Russell J. (1997). Multimedia and understanding: Expert and novice responses to different representations of chemical phenomena. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 43(9), 949-968.
Wang, C.Y. (2007). “The Role of Mental-Modeling Ability, Content Knowledge, and Mental Models in General Chemistry Students’ Understanding about Molecular Polari,” Dissertation for the Doctor Degree of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the University of Missouri. Columbia
Women perceive less peer recognition than men controlling for actual peer recognition
Get PDFGaining recognition from peers is important for students’ development of physics identity – the extent to which they view themselves as a physics person (Carlone & Johnson, 2007; Hazari, Sonnert, Sadler, & Shanahan, 2010). Previous research, however, has found gender differences in both perceived and actual recognition: men perceive significantly more recognition from others (perceived recognition) than women (Hazari, Sadler, & Sonnert, 2013) and men receive significantly more nominations for being strong in their physics course from peers (actual recognition) than women (Bloodhart, Balgopal, Casper, Sample McMeeking, & Fischer, 2020). These findings suggest a few possible relationships between gender, perceived recognition, and actual recognition, each of which suggests different implications. For example, it could be that men perceive more recognition than women on aggregate because men and women have similar perceived recognition from peers at every level of actual recognition, but men receive more actual recognition than women. Such a relationship would imply that instructors must create more gender equity in actual recognition, for instance by providing more ways for women to gain recognition from peers. Alternatively, men might perceive more recognition than women at every level of actual recognition. This relationship would imply that either men over-estimate their actual recognition or women under-estimate their actual recognition, or a combination of the two. The instructional implication in this case would be to ensure that all students appropriately perceive recognition from peers.
We designed a study to determine these relationships using survey responses from students in introductory physics courses. We performed multiple different regression analyses relating gender, actual recognition from peers, and perceived recognition from peers. The best model revealed that controlling for actual recognition, women perceive significantly lower recognition from their peers than men (the second hypothesis above). These findings suggest that in order to decrease the gender difference in perceived peer recognition, and subsequently in physics identity, it is not sufficient to increase women’s actual recognition from peers. Instead, instructors must teach all students to appropriately acknowledge and internalize different forms of peer recognition in their physics courses, for example by teaching about intellectual humility (Sundstrom & Cardetti, 2021).
REFERENCES
Bloodhart, B., Balgopal, M. M., Casper, A. M. A., Sample McMeeking, L. B., & Fischer, E. V. (2020). Outperforming yet undervalued: Undergraduate women in STEM. PLoS One, 15(6), e0234685.
Carlone, H. B., & Johnson, A. (2007). Understanding the science experiences of successful women of color: Science identity as an analytic lens. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 44(8), 1187-1218.
Hazari, Z., Sadler, P. M., & Sonnert, G. (2013). The science identity of college students: Exploring the intersection of gender, race, and ethnicity. Journal of College Science Teaching, 42(5), 82-91.
Hazari, Z., Sonnert, G., Sadler, P. M., & Shanahan, M. C. (2010). Connecting high school physics experiences, outcome expectations, physics identity, and physics career choice: A gender study. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 47(8), 978-1003.
Sundstrom, M., & Cardetti, F. (2021). Exploring the introductory physics classroom through the lens of intellectual humility: Handling what you do not know. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 17(2), 020135
Post-COVID junior physics lab: The new normal
Get PDFPhysics laboratory is the most challenging aspect of teaching physics in a pandemic environment: How can we teach experimental skills when students are not in the lab? How do we ensure that both on-campus and online students develop relevant experimental skills and enjoy labs? Finally, how do we ensure COVID safety when students work in groups? In junior physics labs there is an additional challenge of scaling-up any teaching approach to large student cohorts. At the School of Physics, we teach cohorts of ~800 students per semester over four units of study at different levels: fundamental, regular and advanced. In this presentation we will share our experience and lessons learned over the last three-four years moving from teaching labs in the pre-pandemic world to the current new normal that includes both on-campus and online labs with hundreds of students in each stream.
Back in 2019, our Junior Physics Labs were very traditional: printed lab manuals, hand-written logbooks, bench notes as supportive materials, crowded classes, hand-drawn graphs, in-person paper tests, etc. We just moved into a new beautiful lab space and had been working on modifying lab curriculum, as well as lab equipment which had been largely unchanged for 20 years.
However, in early 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic forced universities, including The University of Sydney (USYD), to move all classes online. For us this happened right at the start of semester, so it was necessary to quickly find a way to run labs in an online format. This included both running the experiments and managing all assignments, groupwork, and logbooks online. After some trial and error (including hybrid) over 2020-2021, we have set up completely independent online labs which now run in parallel with the campus labs and receive good feedback from remote students. They also provide a fallback plan for students who are in COVID-19 isolation and cannot attend the labs in-person.
This transition also required a new approach to labs navigation on Canvas (web-based learning management system used by USYD) so we designed and developed new pages for both on-campus and online streams so that students can easily find required information and materials for each week. We introduced e-Lab manuals, shared e-logbooks, online quizzes, practical online tests, videos, and simulators which are now used in both in-person and online labs, elevating student experience and simplifying lab coordination and management. The main software tools that we use are Canvas, Zoom, and MS Office 365 (or Google Docs/Sheets). In addition to these we use mobile apps, e.g. Phyphox, and simulators, e.g. MultiSim and Phet, for doing or simulating experiments at home.
Fast forward to 2022, physics labs at The University of Sydney have been returned to the fully face-to-face mode, though many students are still overseas. It is likely that many will also prefer to study remotely in the longer-term. In this presentation we discuss the rationale behind incorporating features of online labs into face-to-face labs and discuss how to run engaging and fun labs while maintaining appropriate social distancing and hygiene standards
Translation and adaptation of “Study Processes Questionnaire for Physics” to the Turkish language
Get PDFIn this study, an aim was to adapt the Study Processes Questionnaire for Physics (SPQP) (Sharma, Stewart, Wilson, & Gökalp, 2013) to Turkish, which is adapted from the Study Process Questionnaire-SPQ (Biggs, 1987) by Sharma et al. (2013). The aim of adapting this scale to Turkish is that there is no scale of study processes suitable for science subjects available for secondary school students in Turkey. Our aim in this study is to use this scale on secondary school students studying in Turkey to measure the processes surrounding how they think about physics subjects, their ways of knowing how to learn and their working methods. The original SPQP scale contains 28 5-point Likert type items administered to university physics students. Its validity and reliability were tested and the results were evaluated. Afterall, 16 items were retained in the scale. Validity and reliability results of SPQP were consistent with SPQ. In the current study, the SPQP was to be used for younger students. Beside changing the language, cultural and environmental differences were taken into account by the researchers. The items were translated into Turkish and carefully assessed by the experts to see if it fit the culture of the country. Expert opinions were taken to ensure unity on the terms. Expert opinion was again consulted to see its suitability for the purpose and target students. At the current stage, the adapted SPQP is ready to be used for a pilot study with about 600 students. This stage will be completed by November and the detailed results and conclusions will be presented.
REFERENCES
Biggs, J. B. (1987). Student Approaches to Learning and Studying. Australian Council for Educational Research. Camberwell, Vic.
Sharma, M. D., Stewart, C., Wilson, R., & Gokalp, M. S. (2013). Student Approaches to Learning in Physics-Validity and Exploration Using Adapted SPQ. International Journal of Environmental and Science Education, 8(2), 241-253
Finding assessment regimes in an instructional system
Get PDFIn order to be able to solve the problems faced by modern societies both educators and students must be proactive in seeking new methods in education which leads them to productive lives. In our system, the system used by Ariaian Young Innovative Minds Institute which is a student-centered learning environment, our students take responsibility for their own learning and they identify what they need to learn to have a better understanding of the problem by getting the necessary information from books, teachers, their team members, internet and several references. Educators and teachers also consider how to help them become independent learners while applying their knowledge to solve problems. So instead of memorizing formula without conceptual understanding, deep understanding by research projects helps develop their building capacities. Science Motivation by Discussion and Controversy (SMDC) model engages our students in classrooms to extend their abilities. Collaboration, discussion and constructive challenges are considered as a useful instructional strategy for obtaining the necessary intellectual commitment from students to generate a conceptual conflict and to require them to resolve it. Rather than using assessments which rely on pre-test and post-test with the main measure being Hake gain, our model uses interesting tournaments or conferences for students with a large spread of fields, with complexity of tasks and solutions which led to a complex scoring system to give a guide for real assessment. Our main contribution is a method, which results in more and more emphasis of independent study and research by students. For more accurate descriptions of its generalization and applicability, which is more complex and less common but nonetheless an important case, some interesting and rather different types of the selected tasks in our country and international tournaments, PYPT/ IYPT/ PYNT/ IYNT/ ICYS…, are published in our international journal as a full paper, Young Scientist Research Journal (http://journal.ayimi.org ). Since it is impossible to cover everything related to these papers, the focus here lies on some of the abstracts in our recent articles. The objective of this section is to explain some structure of possible scenarios to compare theory and experiments. To achieve this, various regimes have been identified and are discussed in this presentation, which provides an overview by the main academic author and includes examples from four high school students and one student from 3rd semester in medical science.
Various numerical models and simulations also Tracker, MATLAB , or 3D are used to capture phenomena and solving problems which are discussed during tournaments such as: Finding frequency of the sound in a drum and the difference between the stretched and normal mode in its membrane; Terminal velocity of a washer with its spinning on a vertical steel rod and its maximum tilt; Physical and geometrical characteristics of a cylindrical dice and the best ratios in its structure; Unsinkable metal disk with a hole which may float on the surface of water in a container when a vertical water jet hits its centre; or a Looping pendulum in steady state and motion phase to find the coefficient of friction as an important parameter in the whole function of the system.
REFERENCES
Izadi, D. & Bultin, M. M., (2014). Active Learning by Innovation in Teaching (AlIT). Frontiers of Fundamental Physics and Physics Education Research, 529–536. http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-00297-2
Izadi, D., Mora Ley, C. E., & Ramírez Díaz, M. H. (2017). Science motivation by discussion and controversy (SMDC) model. IOP Publishing Ltd, Physics Education, 52(3). https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6552/aa617d
Izadi, D. & Mora Ley, C. E. (2013). Active Learning by Innovation in Teaching (ALIT), Scientific Fight and Reviewing Model. Latin-American Journal of Physics Education, 7(2), 161-166
An instrument to guide instructors of undergraduate experimental programs: A comment on findings from physics
Get PDFDegree programs usually have a series of experimental activities, ranging from practicals, investigations, projects, to field work, forming a contained program often referred to as the ‘undergraduate experimental program’. The experimental program provides students with an understanding of the processes of science, contributes to student experiences and is relevant for mapping against graduate qualities – soft skills. While extant literature points to evaluations of individual experiments (Barrie et al., 2015; Yeung, Cornish, Kable, & Sharma, 2019), evaluations of complete experimental programs are rare. To this end, we have developed the ASELL Laboratory Program Evaluation (ALPE) survey for eliciting student experiences of undergraduate experimental programs. The ALPE was administered with 9790 students in 71 programs at 10 Australian universities, in five disciplines. Based on exploratory factor analysis, two factors emerged: the first factor included ALPE items relating to how the laboratory program influenced students’ science discipline knowledge and skills; the second factor included ALPE items related to how well the course contributed to development of general capabilities, such as items about “teamwork” and “ethics”.
Herzberg’s 1968 Two Factor Motivation-Hygiene theory originated in the organisational psychology sphere and has since been applied in various educational settings. The “motivation” factor refers to the elements of work that enhance a person’s satisfaction – associated with achievement and competency. The “hygiene” factor refers to the elements of work that include the provision of resources and support, such as supervision practices and procedures. In this presentation, we demonstrate how the “motivation-hygiene” theory applies to the two factors that emerged from the ALPE survey data, and how it can provide a meaningful framework for interpreting students’ perspectives of their undergraduate laboratory programs.
Finally, we comment on the findings from physics within this data set – of the five disciplines included in the large study of the ALPE survey, physics is a standout with lower correlations between individual items and overall laboratory program experience.
REFERENCES
Barrie, S. C., Bucat, R. B., Buntine, M. A., Burke da Silva, K., Crisp, G. T., George, A. V., Jamie, I. M., Kable, S. H., Lim, K. F., Pyke, S. M., Read, J. R., Sharma M. D., and Yeung A. A (2015) Development, Evaluation and Use of a Student Experience Survey in Undergraduate Science Laboratories: The Advancing Science by Enhancing Learning in the Laboratory Student Laboratory Learning Experience Survey. International Journal of Science Education, 37(11), 1795-1814.
Herzberg, F. (1968). "One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?". Harvard Business Review, 46(1), 53–62, OCLC 219963337.
Yeung, A., S. Cornish, S. Kable, and M. Sharma. (2019). "What can instructors focus on when improving undergraduate science experiments? Supporting a cross- disciplinary approach." International Journal of Innovation in Science and Mathematics Education, 27(3), 25-40
“What do I get out of It?”: Characterising students’ main takeaways from a physics class for non-STEM students
Get PDFFor science students, physics classes offer students the physics knowledge they will need for their future science careers. What benefit, therefore, do non-science majors get from taking general education physics courses? In the study we are presenting, we investigated what non-science students find the most valuable from a general education physics class. We evaluated students’ responses to a quiz question asking them to articulate the two most important, interesting, or valuable things they learned from the course. We created a coding scheme to place these takeaways into the following categories: Scientific Content, Scientific Epistemology, Societal Applications, Underrepresentation in Science, Science Attitudes, and Pedagogy and Learning. We investigated how students’ relationships with science (such as through their majors or self-reported attitudes towards science), course performance, and demographic information relate to the types of takeaways they report.
Preliminary results show that Scientific Content is the most common type of takeaway that students report across two semesters, with slightly more reporting of Scientific Content takeaways during a fully remote semester of instruction. However, in both semesters, over half of all student takeaways fell into categories other than Scientific Content. This result suggests that there are a variety of ideas from this course that may strongly affect non-science students, not just ideas relating to physical principles
Astronomy during the school day
Get PDFThe field of astronomy offers a wide range of opportunities for engaging students in physics. Optical astronomy, however, requires night-time conditions and reasonably low levels of light pollution. As a result, many courses resort to teaching about astronomy rather than teaching by doing astronomy. The author is currently investigating ways in which hands-on activities related to astronomy can be developed and included in physics and science lessons and STEM clubs during the school day.
SOLAR ASTRONOMY
A good starting point is an investigation of the sun. Designing and building a sundial involves consideration of the meridian line, the time of year and accurate calibration. Projecting an image of the sun introduces the physics of light and optics as well as safety considerations. Measuring the changing position of sunspots from day to day can lead to a calculation of the period of rotation of the sun. As a bridge to non-optical astronomy, the concept of space weather – for example, how the sun interacts with the earth’s atmosphere – can be readily understood by school students and actively pursued using readily available equipment. The author is currently collaborating with the Society for Amateur Radio Astronomers to make monitoring equipment such as SuperSID available to schools.
RADIO ASTRONOMY
The power and relatively low cost of modern electronics can be harnessed to enable students to receive and work with radio signals from space. With guidance, students can design and build suitable directional or horn antennas using off-the-shelf materials. Coupled with software-defined radios, modular low-noise amplifiers and filters, these antennas allow the collection of real-time data for interpretation. The author has been working in this field to develop a system for detecting meteors using reflected radio pulses. The latest project aims to replicate the SARA Scope-in-a-Box system to detect and analyse hydrogen-line emissions from our own galaxy.
ASTRONOMY ONLINE
Many professional astronomers collect data from remotely controlled optical and radio telescopes. The growth of technology in this field has resulted in a range of online telescopes becoming available for public access. The SLOOH project provides access to optical telescopes within an educational context which includes Quests, Star Parties and social media groups. The Onsala Space Observatory allows free public access to its three online radio telescopes. Data and observations from the Leon Mow Radio Observatory can be streamed from the dark-sky site outside Melbourne, owned and operated by the Astronomical Society of Victoria.
SUMMARY
The focus of this session will be to identify and describe a range of examples of resources which can be used during the school day which are free or involve relatively modest cost. The author aims to foster exploration in the field and to encourage students and teachers to enjoy physics and perhaps to become citizen scientists and contribute to relevant research.
REFERENCES
Scope-in-a-Box, Society for Radio Astronomers, retrieved August 30, 2022 from https://www.radio-astronomy.org/store/projects/scope-in-a-box
SuperSID, Society for Radio Astronomers, retrieved August 30, 2022 from https://www.radio-astronomy.org/store/projects/supersid
SLOOH, retrieved August 30, 2022 from https://www.slooh.com/
Leon Mow Radio Observatory, Astronomical Society of Victoria, retrieved August 30, 2022 from https://asv.org.au/lmro_hom