Helping students develop an understanding of Archimedes’ principle. II. Development of research-based instructional materials

Heron, Paula R. L.; Loverude, Michael E.; Shaffer, Peter S.; McDermott, Lillian C.

doi:10.1119/1.1607337

Cited by 58 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Hake found that students in the latter courses averaged gains that were twice as large as those in the traditional classes (Hake, 1998(Hake, , 2002. Results consistent with these have since been obtained by numerous other physics research groups (Ambrose et al, 1999;Redish, 2003;Heron et al, 2003;Loverude et al, 2003). Interactive engagement of students in their own learning measurably enhanced the conceptual development and problem-solving abilities of the learners.…”

Section: Classroom Studiessupporting

confidence: 71%

The Impending Revolution in Undergraduate Science Education

2005

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There is substantial evidence that scientific teaching in the sciences, i.e. teaching that employs instructional strategies that encourage undergraduates to become actively engaged in their own learning, can produce levels of understanding, retention and transfer of knowledge that are greater than those resulting from traditional lecture/lab classes. But widespread acceptance by university faculty of new pedagogies and curricular materials still lies in the future. In this essay we review recent literature that sheds light on the following questions:• What has evidence from education research and the cognitive sciences told us about undergraduate instruction and student learning in the sciences? • What role can undergraduate student research play in a science curriculum?• What benefits does information technology have to offer?• What changes are needed in institutions of higher learning to improve science teaching? We conclude that widespread promotion and adoption of the elements of scientific teaching by university science departments could have profound effects in promoting a scientifically literate society and a reinvigorated research enterprise.

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Section: Classroom Studiessupporting

confidence: 71%

The Impending Revolution in Undergraduate Science Education

2005

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“…A series of studies by the University of Washington Physics Education Group focused on student understanding of static fluids and related topics: the ideal gas law [26,27] and volume of an ideal gas [28], buoyancy [2,3,29], and hydrostatic pressure [4]. While buoyancy was not directly applicable to our work, the ideal gas studies informed our perspective on microscopic versus macroscopic approaches (detailed in the next section), and tutorial development (Sec.…”

Section: A Pressure and Static Fluidsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The misconceptions perspective is a framework used in designing activities, and focuses on carefully delineating student misconceptions and difficulties and employing elicit-confront-resolve strategies in the development of the interventions; curricula are assessed using pre-and postconceptual tests [2][3][4]. One concern with this approach is that the elicit-confront-resolve approach sends the undesirable epistemological message that students' everyday experiences are not valuable in the physics classroom [5] (p. 633).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using the resources framework to design, assess, and refine interventions on pressure in fluids

Young

Meredith

2017

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.

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The resources framework provides a useful and generative model of student thinking and learning. In particular, it suggests various strategies for instruction such as priming resources and refining intuition that allow students to build on knowledge they already have. In this paper, we describe the affordances of the resources framework in guiding the design, assessment, and refinement of interventions on pressure in fluids. This perspective kept us alert for cognitive resources on which students could build a deeper understanding and encouraged us to model student thinking as complex and context dependent, even on this narrow topic. This framework also facilitated a focus on evidence of productivity in student work as an alternative assessment to conceptual pre-and post testing.

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“…Understanding of buoyancy is a prerequisite for learning about Archimedes' principle, and Heron et al (2003) found that it was helpful to provide learners with laboratory experience in buoyancy prior to introducing Archimedes' principle, in order to address intuitive ideas and misconceptions. The learners who participated in our study had already been taught about buoyancy by their teacher in regular classes before they participated in our study, but to ensure that all of them understood buoyancy and to familiarize them with the structure of the learning environment, including the laboratory and the EDT, we chose to present a set of inquiries about buoyancy prior to introducing Archimedes' principle.…”

Section: Domain: Archimedes' Principlementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The domain involved in the present study was Archimedes' principle, which states that ''an object fully or partially immersed in a fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid that the object displaces'' (Halliday et al 1997, as cited in Hughes 2005. This principle therefore entails that the mass of fluid displaced by a floating or suspended object is equal to the mass of the object, and the volume of fluid displaced by a sunken or suspended object is equal to the volume of the object (Hughes 2005).…”

Section: Domain: Archimedes' Principlementioning

confidence: 99%

Supporting learners’ experiment design

Riesen

Gijlers

Anjewierden

et al. 2018

Education Tech Research Dev

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Inquiry learning is an educational approach in which learners actively construct knowledge and in which performing investigations and conducting experiments is central. To support learners in designing informative experiments we created a scaffold, the Experiment Design Tool (EDT), that provided learners with a step-by-step structure to select variables and to assign values to these variables, together with offering built-in heuristics for experiment design. To further structure the students' approach, the EDT was offered within a set of detailed research questions which again were grouped under a set of broader research questions. Learning results for learners who worked with the EDT were compared to results for learners in two control conditions. In the first control condition, learners received only the detailed research questions and not the EDT; in the second control condition, learners received only the limited set of general research questions. In all conditions, learners conducted their experiments in an online learning environment about the physics topic of Archimedes' principle. Conceptual knowledge was measured before and after the intervention using parallel forms of a knowledge test. Overall results showed significant learning gains in all three conditions, but no significant differences between conditions. However, learners who started with low prior knowledge showed a significantly higher learning gain in the EDT condition than in the two control conditions. This result indicates that the effect of providing learners with scaffolds does not follow a ''one-

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Helping students develop an understanding of Archimedes’ principle. II. Development of research-based instructional materials

Cited by 58 publications

References 5 publications

The Impending Revolution in Undergraduate Science Education

The Impending Revolution in Undergraduate Science Education

Using the resources framework to design, assess, and refine interventions on pressure in fluids

Supporting learners’ experiment design

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