final-program-12-23-14-3

Tuesday morning
GC03:
86
content knowledge that teachers use or need to support student’s
productive scientific engagement with energy concepts and analysis.
We will describe a set of assessment items that we have created to
specifically probe the CKT-E that is relevant for recognizing and
responsively engaging with the energy ideas of HS physics students.
We will share results from pilot studies of over 500 HS physics teachers
and analyze responses to both multiple choice and constructed
response items. We will highlight the example of the use of systems
for energy analysis that we have found to be both particularly relevant
and conspicuously incomplete among many of the HS physics teachers
surveyed.
*This work was supported in part by NSF grant DRL-1222732.
9:30-9:40 a.m. Change in Teachers’ Views about Energy
in the MainePSP*
Contributed – Carolina Alvarado, University of Maine, 5727 Estabrooke
Hall, Orono, ME 04469-5727; carolina.alvarado@maine.edu
Michael C. Wittmann, University of Maine
The Maine Physical Sciences Partnership is an NSF-funded project to
improve the teaching and learning of the physical sciences in grades
6-9. As part of the project, teachers have answered questions on a
specially designed survey about energy. In one question about a block
sliding down a ramp, teachers are asked to give a correct answer,
predict and explain the most common incorrect student answer, and
describe what they might do in class if a student gave that answer. We
discuss the differences found in teachers’ responses in two consecutive
years of PD. We observe a refinement in teachers’ interpretation of
energy transformation, transference and conservation; in the recognition
of the knowledge of student ideas; and a change in the pedagogical
approach they consider to use when facing the students’ alternative
conceptions in the classroom.
*Supported in part by NSF grant #0962805
GC05: 9:50-10 a.m. Developing PCK in Physics Teachers:
Collaboration Between Scientist and Educator
Contributed – William A. Stoll, Georgia State University, 2232 Dunseath
Ave. NW #310, Atlanta, GA 30318; wstoll2@student.gsu.edu
Brian D. Thoms, Kadir Demir, Sumith Doluweera, Georgia State University
Brett Criswell, University of Kentucky
Effective pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) integrating the
expertise of physics content knowledge with pedagogical methods
is a challenge in pre-service science teacher preparation. A unique
physics class designed to develop pre-service teachers’ PCK focused
on facilitating deep conceptual understanding in high-school physics
students is the focus of this presentation. The course collaboratively
developed and co-taught by physics and science education faculty
integrated physics content with a conceptual change pedagogy in a
modeled environment. In addition, the course was designed around
providing students a practical teaching component -- leading minilessons
in a SCALE-UP undergraduate physics class. First year results
show the teacher candidates exhibiting a growing awareness of the
important role students’ ideas play in the teaching and learning of
physics; an increase in both their physics conceptual knowledge and
their confidence in understanding of physics; but limited confidence
in applying teaching for conceptual change.
GC06: 10-10:10 a.m. How Do We Promote PCK Development
Model Its Use Ourselves!*
Contributed – Gay B. Stewart, West Virginia University, Department of
Physics, White Hall, Box 6315 Morgantown, WV 26506-6315;
gbstewart@mail.wvu.edu
At WVU we are developing an instructional program to better
promote PCK in our pre-service teachers. At University of Arkansas
we were part of a successful PhysTEC implementation, expanded by
an NSF Noyce scholarship program. Our students are exposed to the
use of pedagogy built upon an understanding of how students learn
in their own introductory courses. They are then brought into those
courses as apprentice teachers, with topic-specific teaching preparation
each week, including the most useful forms of representing and
communicating content and how students best learn the specific
concepts to be covered (Shulman, 1987). Acquiring this sophisticated
knowledge and developing a practice that is different from
what teachers themselves experienced as students requires learning
opportunities that are more powerful than reading and talking about
new pedagogical ideas (Ball & Cohen, 1996). We ease this transition
by providing both the powerful opportunity and building upon how
they were taught.
*This work supported in part by the PhysTEC and the Noyce program through
grants DUE-9455732 PHY-0108787 and DUE-0733841
Session GD: Undergraduate
Research
GD01:
Location: Nautilus Hall 4
Sponsor: Committee on Physics in Two-Year Colleges
Date: Tuesday, January 6
Time: 8:30–10:30 a.m.
Presider: Dennis Gilbert
8:30-9 a.m. Comparative Cognitive Task Analysis of
Experimental Science and Instructional Laboratory
Courses
Invited – Carl Wieman, 325 Sharon Park Drive, #613 Menlo Park, CA
94025; cwieman@stanford.edu
Undergraduate instructional labs in science generate intense opinions.
Their advocates are passionate as to their importance for teaching
science as an experimental activity and providing “hands-on” learning
experiences, while their detractors (often but not entirely students) offer
harsh criticisms that they are pointless, confusing, and “cookbook.”
Both to help explain the reason for such discrepant views and to aid
in the design of instructional lab courses, I will compare the cognitive
activities associated with a physicist doing experimental research
with the cognitive activities of students in a typical instructional lab.
Examining the detailed cognitive activities of experts (“cognitive
task analysis”) has proven to be useful in designing effective learning
activities and in designing better measurements of student learning.
GD02: 9-9:30 a.m. Understanding and Measuring Project
Ownership in Undergraduate Inquiry-based Laboratory
Courses
Invited – David I. Hanauer, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2015D
Leonard Hall, Indiana, PA 15705; hanauer@pitt.edu
A growing body of research documents the positive outcomes of
research experiences for undergraduates, including increased persistence
in science. Study of undergraduate lab learning experiences has
demonstrated that the design of the experience influences the extent
to which students report ownership of the project, and that project
ownership is one of the psychosocial factors involved in student retention
in the sciences. The current study discusses the initial qualitative
study that generated data on project ownership and presents a new
instrument for measuring project ownership -- the Project Ownership
Survey (POS). Data on the reliability and validity of the instrument
will be presented as a study on the ability of the tool to differentiate
between traditional and inquiry-based laboratory experiences. The
ramifications and potential uses of the tool will be discussed.
GD03:
9:30-9:40 a.m. Student-Directed Research at Guilford
College
Contributed – Donald Andrew, Smith Guilford College, 5800 W. Friendly
Ave., Greensboro, NC 27410; dsmith4@guilford.edu
Student-driven research is threaded through the curriculum of the
physics program at Guilford College. Each student is required to
carry out a senior thesis with his or her own research question and
experimental design. They must write a proposal for their project
WINTER MEETING
JANUARY 3-6
2015
SAN DIEGO, CA