Related papers: Making Space to Sensemake: Epistemic Distancing in…
In active engagement physics classrooms, students get opportunities to make sense of physics together through discussion. They do not always take up these opportunities, in part because of the risk of sharing their ideas and having them…
As educators we often ask our physics students to work in groups---on tutorials, during in-class discussions, and on homework, projects, or exams. Researchers have documented the benefits of group work for students' conceptual mastery and…
In collaborative small-group work, physics students need to both manage social conflict and grapple with conceptual and epistemological differences. In this paper, we document several outlets that students use as tools for managing social…
The ability to emotionally or intellectually understand another person's thoughts and feelings-empathy-can foster critical connections that facilitate learning and collaboration. We present a case study of physics faculty that examines…
English Language Learners (ELLs) are frequently left on the periphery of classroom interactions. Due to misalignment of language skills, teachers and peers communicate with these students less often, decreasing the number of opportunities…
Physics students can encounter difficulties in physics problem solving as a result of failing to use knowledge that they have but do not perceive as relevant or appropriate. In previous work the authors have demonstrated that some of these…
Researchers in physics education have advocated both for including modeling in science classrooms as well as promoting student engagement with sensemaking. These two processes facilitate the generation of new knowledge by connecting to…
In teacher professional development (PD), grouping teachers with varying levels of experience can be a productive and empowering way to stimulate the exchange and co-generation of content and pedagogical knowledge. However, less experienced…
Many studies have investigated students' epistemological framing when solving physics problems. Framing supports students' problem solving as they decide what knowledge to employ and the necessary steps to solve the problem. Students may…
We investigate the dynamics of student behaviors (posture, gesture, vocal register, visual focus) and the substance of their reasoning during collaborative work on inquiry-based physics tutorials. Scherr has characterized student activity…
Equations are about more than computing physical quantities or constructing formal models; they are also about understanding. The conceptual systems physicists use to think about nature are made from many different resources, formal and…
This study investigates how faculty acquire contextual information about students, examining mechanisms and motivations used when sharing their identity to facilitate empathy. Empathy is "the ability and tendency to share and understand…
A considerable share of the literature on physics education and on education more broadly focuses on the principles which should guide the design of courses and of classroom activities. In this short article I wish to place more attention…
The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated social distancing at every level of society, including universities and research institutes, raising essential questions concerning the continuing importance of physical proximity for scientific and…
Implementation of cognitive apprenticeship in an introductory physics lab group problem solving exercise may be mitigated by epistemic views toward physics of non-physics science majors. Quantitative pre-post data of the Force Concept…
Many physics instructors aim to support student sensemaking in their classrooms. However, this can be challenging since instances of sensemaking tend to be short-lived, with students often defaulting to approaches based on answer-making or…
Too often, physics students are beset by feelings of failure and isolation rather than experiencing the creative joys of discovery that physics has to offer. This dissertation research was founded on the desire of a teacher to make physics…
Upper-division physics students spend much of their time solving problems. In addition to their basic skills and background, their epistemic framing can form an important part of their ability to learn physics from these problems.…
Student learning of sound waves can be helped through the creation of group-learning classroom materials whose development and design rely on explicit investigations into student understanding. We describe reasoning in terms of sets of…
Science communication skills are considered essential learning objectives for undergraduate physics students. However, high enrollment and limited class resources present significant barriers to providing students ample opportunities to…