Tensions and Trade-offs in Instructional Goals for Physics Courses Aimed at Engineers

Abstract

My work focuses on student and teacher epistemologies and how they couple to other cognitive machinery and help to drive behavior in learning environments. My academic training was in Physics and Philosophy before I turned to science (particularly physics) education research. More recently, I have started exploring engineering students' entangled identities and epistemologies.Eric Kuo, Stanford University Dr. Ayush Gupta, University of Maryland, College Park Ayush Gupta is Research Assistant Professor in Physics and Keystone Instructor in the A. J. Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland. Broadly speaking he is interested in modeling learning and reasoning processes. In particular, he is attracted to fine-grained analysis of video data both from a microgenetic learning analysis methodology (drawing on knowledge in pieces) as well as interaction analysis methodology. He has been working on how learners' emotions are coupled with their conceptual and epistemological reasoning. He is also interested in developing models of the dynamics of categorizations (ontological) underlying students' reasoning in physics. Lately, he has been interested in engineering design thinking, how engineering students come to understand and practice design. Tensions and trade-offs in instructional goals for physics courses aimed at engineers AbstractIn planning and teaching courses for engineering majors, physics instructors grapple with multiple instructional goals: extensive content coverage, quantitative problem solving, conceptual understanding, motivation, and more. The temptation is to treat these goals as mutually reinforcing or at least as not in conflict. We argue, however, that at least for novice instructors, these goals can be in tension. In our study, one instructor was experienced and emphasized traditional quantitative problem solving. A second instructor teaching another lecture section of the same course was a novice who chose to emphasize a goal suggested by physics education research and studies of practicing engineers, namely mathematical sensemaking-translating and seeking coherence between mathematical formalism and physical reasoning. A common final exam, containing standard traditional problems and also opportunities for mathematical sense-making, enabled us to document the following trade-off: the novice instructor outperformed the experienced traditional instructor at fostering mathematical sense-making but underperformed at fostering traditional problem solving. In other words, the novice instructor's success at teaching mathematical sense-making came at a cost. A third instructor, expert in emphasizing mathematical sense-making, showed that it is possible to succeed at teaching mathematical sense-making without a significant trade-off in teaching traditional problem-solving. However, for instructors considering the adoption of physics/engineering education research-based instructional strategies, trade-offs must be acknowledged and tough choices must be made.

Higher-Order Thinking Skills in Prospective Physics Teacher

“…This means that teachers in carrying out their roles must be literate in digital technology and matters related to the application of information technology in learning. In addition, teachers must also understand that career and life are increasingly complex in this century (Mısır, 2018, Anon, 2015Arends, 2012;Elby, 2015;Reiss, 2018).…”