Impact of a conventional introductory laboratory course on the understanding of measurement

Volkwyn, Trevor; Allie, Saalih; Buffler, Andy; Lubben, Fred

doi:10.1103/physrevstper.4.010108

Cited by 78 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…[1][2][3]). Laboratory courses have also been specifically called out as critical pieces of the undergraduate curriculum by professional groups within several disciplines [4][5][6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research-Based Assessment of Students’ Beliefs about Experimental Physics: When is Gender a Factor?

Wilcox

Lewandowski

2016

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.

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The existence of gender differences in student performance on conceptual assessments and their responses to attitudinal assessments has been repeatedly demonstrated. This difference is often present in students' preinstruction responses and persists in their postinstruction responses. However, one area in which the presence of gender differences has not been extensively explored is undergraduate laboratory courses. For example, one of the few laboratory focused research-based assessments, the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS), has not been tested for the existence of gender differences in students' responses. Here, we utilize a national data set of responses to the E-CLASS to determine if they demonstrate significant gender differences. We also investigate how these differences vary along multiple student and course demographic slices, including course level (firstyear vs beyond-first-year) and major (physics vs nonphysics). We observe a gender gap in pre-and postinstruction E-CLASS scores in the aggregate data both for the overall score and for most items individually. However, for some subpopulations (e.g., beyond-first-year students) the size or even existence of the gender gap depends on another dimension (e.g., student major). We also find that for all groups the gap in postinstruction scores vanishes or is greatly reduced when controlling for preinstruction scores, course level, and student major.

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“…[1][2][3]). Laboratory courses have also been specifically called out as critical pieces of the undergraduate curriculum by professional groups within several disciplines [4][5][6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Research-Based Assessment of Students’ Beliefs about Experimental Physics: When is Gender a Factor?

Wilcox

Lewandowski

2016

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.

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“…As curricular requirements became more rigid (to meet college entrance requirements, for example) and enrollment numbers increased, discovery lab activities inevitably evolved to become more structured, leading to well defined experiment protocols [2], derogatorily referred to as "cookbook." These overly structured labs have been criticized for stifling students' use of cognitive and metacognitive skills [4,12,13], impeding students' epistemologies regarding the nature of experimentation and scientific measurement [14][15][16], and being generally "uninspiring" [17]. Nonetheless, step-by-step verification and confirmation labs remain the norm at many institutions, often to satisfy conceptual physics goals by ensuring students will obtain the "right" answer [5,12].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Value added or misattributed? A multi-institution study on the educational benefit of labs for reinforcing physics content

Holmes

Olsen

Thomas

et al. 2017

Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res.

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Instructional labs are widely seen as a unique, albeit expensive, way to teach scientific content. We measured the effectiveness of introductory lab courses at achieving this educational goal across nine different lab courses at three very different institutions. These institutions and courses encompassed a broad range of student populations and instructional styles. The nine courses studied had two key things in common: the labs aimed to reinforce the content presented in lectures, and the labs were optional. By comparing the performance of students who did and did not take the labs (with careful normalization for selection effects), we found universally and precisely no added value to learning course content from taking the labs as measured by course exam performance. This work should motivate institutions and departments to reexamine the goals and conduct of their lab courses, given their resource-intensive nature. We show why these results make sense when looking at the comparative mental processes of students involved in research and instructional labs, and offer alternative goals and instructional approaches that would make lab courses more educationally valuable.

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“…Among these, a few rare studies have dealt with elementary schoolchildren (Flandé, 2003;Lehrer, 2003;Ligozat, 2008;Petrosino, Lehrer, & Schauble, 2003), but most concern older students, either in middle school (Lubben & Millar, 1996), high school (Journeaux, Séré, & Winther, 1995;Séré, 1992;Séré, Journeaux, & Larcher, 1993;Séré, Journeaux, & Winther, 1998), or university (Allie, Buffler, Kaunda, Campbell, & Lubben, 1998Evangelinos, Psillos, & Valassiades, 2002;Lippmann, 2005;Lubben, Campbell, Buffler, & Allie, 2001;Maisch, Ney, & Balacheff, 2008;Volkwyn, Allie, Buffler, & Lubben, 2008). In these papers, there are numerous studies on measuring and measurement available for reference, but very few deal with the teaching of physical attributes in a school setting.…”

Section: Previous Researchmentioning

confidence: 97%

Schoolteacher trainees’ difficulties about the concepts of attribute and measurement

Passelaigue

Munier

2015

Educ Stud Math

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BAttribute^and Bmeasurement^are two fundamental concepts in mathematics and physics. Teaching these concepts is essential even in elementary school, but numerous studies have pointed out pupils' difficulties with them. These studies emphasized that pupils must learn about attributes before being taught how to measure these attributes, which can be done through activities involving comparing and sorting. In France, as in numerous Englishspeaking countries, official teaching instructions for the elementary-school years (Grades 1 to 5) recommend this approach. We consider that to be able to teach attributes, teachers themselves must master and differentiate the concepts of attribute and measurement. Indeed, these concepts are part of any teacher's subject matter knowledge, especially of what Ball called Bspecialized content knowledge^, which is needed to effectively teach both attributes and measurement. In this study, we analyze the level of mastery of these concepts among French teacher trainees. Our findings suggest that future teachers do not clearly differentiate these concepts, and that the concept of attribute is the less well understood. We highlight that an erroneous understanding of attribute is extremely prevalent: almost half of our participants think of attribute as a vague, imprecise notion. Finally, we discuss the possible causes of this misconception and its implications for teaching.

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Impact of a conventional introductory laboratory course on the understanding of measurement

Cited by 78 publications

References 20 publications

Research-Based Assessment of Students’ Beliefs about Experimental Physics: When is Gender a Factor?

Research-Based Assessment of Students’ Beliefs about Experimental Physics: When is Gender a Factor?

Value added or misattributed? A multi-institution study on the educational benefit of labs for reinforcing physics content

Schoolteacher trainees’ difficulties about the concepts of attribute and measurement

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