Doctor of Philosophy / Curriculum and Instruction Programs / Nobel S. Rebello / This dissertation reports on a naturalistic evaluation study of a series of NSF grant projects collectively known as PEPTYC -- Physics Enhancement Project for Two Year College Physics Instructors. The project encompassed seven different cycles of professional development occurring during the 1990's via May Institutes, held at Texas A&M University. Follow-up meetings were held at American Association of Physics Teachers - Texas Section Meetings. The research was conducted post hoc. The research evaluated the characteristics of effective professional development under an evaluation frame work designed by D.L. Kirkpatrick (1959) and adapted by the researcher to address issues that are pertinent to the professional development of faculty. This framework was adapted to be viewed through an educator's eye in an effort to ascertain the long term affects of the program and determine how the program affected the participants' attitudes, pedagogical knowledge, and instructional practices. The PEPTYC program philosophy was based on the premise, supported by research, that professional development programs addressing specific teaching practices are more successful than generic programs. Furthermore, professional development is more effective in helping teachers use alternative approaches when teachers are engaged in active learning experiences rather than passively listening to lectures or presentations. The naturalistic study was based on surveys and semi-structured interviews with 14 individuals who participated in PEPTYC workshops, as well as presenters of the PEPTYC program. The interviews were analyzed to describe how the PEPTYC project influenced the participants long after they had completed their training. This project can inform the development of similar evaluation studies of other professional development programs.

Hong Kong is a British colony, a world trade centre, and a world banking and financial centre. The highly successful city is strongly linked with education in Hong Kong. However, education in Hong Kong is much influenced by education in Britain: Sixth Form education is a bridge crossing from school to tertiary education or from school to society. Mathematics is a foundation for all subjects. In addition, mathematics and physics are most popular subjects in the Hong, Kong A-level examination. The mathematical and physical sciences have changed significantly during the past few decades. The most conspicuous and impressive development in mathematics is the enormous increase in the amount of new subject matter being created. In physical science, the coming of relativity theory and quantum theory have revolutionised the traditional concepts. Almost all the new technologies in the world are based on modern physics theory. Such developments have resulted in a complete revision of the content of university courses and school curricula. More generally, changes at one level of education are almost certain to cause changes at other levels and problems at the relevant interfaces. The author's study investigated the transition in mathematics and physics education from school to Hong Kong Polytechnic(s). The first part of this study mainly dealt with the mathematics and physics education in school, particularly the relationship between these two disciplines as well as their A-level syllabuses. The second part of this study dealt with the students' academic performance in mathematics and physics at polytechnic in relation to their entry qualifications and the medium of instruction in school. In addition, a number of surveys on the use of mathematics and physics topics conducted among students in the polytechnic was studied in. order to help the author to propose new A-level syllabuses to fit the modern tertiary education in Hong Kong. Finally, a set of recommendations for the improvement of the Hong Kong education system in general as well as mathematics and physics education in particular are suggested.

This dissertation presents a phenomenographic case study of a senior physics professor during and beyond an extended collaboration with a science education professor from a College of Education. The context for the collaboration is the co-teaching of a physics course for graduate students in a Masters of Teaching program at a research university in the southeastern US. The course was focused on physics content and the pedagogy of teaching for conceptual change. The purpose of this study is to investigate from a physics professor’s perspective the progression of his conceptions and practices regarding teaching for conceptual change over the duration of the collaboration and beyond. Prior research indicates that such change is a difficult and complex process requiring a transformative, personal experience. Collaboration between science departments and Colleges of Education has been identified as a key opportunity for transformative experiences, but research on the resulting changes is limited. Questions addressed by this study include (a) what is the evidence of change in a physics professor’s conceptions of teaching for conceptual change, (b) what is the evidence of change in a physics professor’s practices of teaching for conceptual change, (c) what are the learning environment characteristics identified by the physics professor that either facilitated or hindered changes in his conceptions and/or practices in teaching for conceptual change. The primary data were interviews with the physics professor integrated with direct classroom observations. Emergent categories of how the physics professor conceived and practiced teaching for conceptual change showed a progression over time toward a more expert view on teaching for conceptual change. Key factors identified in the physics professor’s progression are: 1) his motivation to become a more effective teacher, 2) the expertise of the science education professor, and 3) the way the collaboration developed. Limiting factors identified include: 1) time pressure for content coverage, 2) difficulty in translating change to other contexts, and 3) unsupportive external environments.

This study is a systematic literature review on the role of models and representations in the teaching, learning and understanding of the atom and atomic concepts. The aim of the study is to investigate the role of different visual representations, what models and representations are used in the science classroom, how learners interpret different external representations of the atom, what mental models students construct, and how the representations can be used and designed for meaningful learning and teaching of the atom and atomic concepts.   In this systematic literature review, a combination of different databases was used to search for literature, namely ERIC, Scopus and Google Scholar. Some limiters were used to narrow down the returned results: the articles should be peer-reviewed and be published 1990-01-01 or later. Ten of the returned articles were included for individual analysis in the study.   The results of the study show that students often find concepts of atomic structure difficult and confusing. The abstract microscopic world of atoms cannot be seen with the naked eye, and models are therefore necessary and crucial educational tools for teaching atomic concepts in school. However, when using a model, it is important for the teacher to explain the rules of the model, and the advantages and limitations of the representation must be discussed. Analysis of the included articles revealed three types of representations used to represent atomic phenomena: two-dimensional static diagrams or pictures (e.g. a picture of the atom), three-dimensional videos or simulations (e.g. virtual reality simulations), and visual analogies (e.g. the Bohr planetary model of the atom). The use of simulations and interactive learning environments seem to have a positive effect on students’ learning. One of the studies, described in the articles included for analysis, showed that students appreciated the use of virtual reality simulations, since it made abstract concepts easier to understand when they could be visualized.

If the goal of teaching introductory physics is to help every student have successful learning experiences, then we need to answer at least two key questions to achieve this goal. First, what instructional strategies will promote equitable success for students? And second, how can we prepare instructors to use these teaching strategies effectively? Prior research demonstrates a persistent gender gap in introductory physics; however, we find that physics identity mediates the impact of gender on both conceptual understanding and retention in physics programs. Therefore, we apply Wenger's framework of identity development in communities of practice to hypothesize that collaborative, community-building instructional strategies can promote equity by enabling women's identification with physics. Through meta-analysis of results from 26 courses, we find trends in three different models of equity that support this hypothesis. To address our second question, we apply a similar community-based model to TA professional development. We find that teaching communities of practice can yield statistically significant improvements in TAs' identification as physics educators and make qualitative changes to TAs' teaching approaches. / Thesis (Master, Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy) -- Queen's University, 2013-08-23 13:18:26.328

Laboratory work as a teaching and learning method is given prominence in the Swedish physics curriculum for upper secondary school. It is emphasised that students should be given opportunities to develop the ability to search for answers to questions, plan, conduct, interpret and present results. Moreover, students should also be encouraged to use their physics knowledge to communicate, argument and present conclusions. This thesis is based on the belief that physics laboratory work creates a special discourse, where the student becomes the actor and the teacher becomes the organiser and observer. Such an environment enables students to naturally engage in physics discussions using their own terms. The aim is to explore students’ laboratory work at upper secondary school in-depth, with respect to its design and influence on students’ communication. Through analysis of students’ communication, the purpose is to better understand the physics laboratory work’s possibilities as a teaching and learning method. This will contribute to ongoing debate about the effectiveness of laboratory work. The results show that laboratory work consists of similar activities but differs in amount of time allocated to the different activities. Different types of talk are used for different purposes. An analytical framework has been created to enable deeper investigations of how and what students are talking about at both a linguistic and cognitive level. Moreover, the analysis shows the importance of students acquiring knowledge about physics and understanding the value of using an investigative approach as well as acquiring core content physics knowledge. / Laboratory work as a teaching and learning method is given prominence in the Swedish physics curriculum for upper secondary school. It is emphasised that students should be given opportunities to develop the ability to search for answers to questions, plan, conduct, interpret and present results. Moreover, students should also be encouraged to use their physics knowledge to communicate, argument and present conclusions. This thesis is based on the belief that physics laboratory work creates a special discourse, where the student becomes the actor and the teacher becomes the organiser and observer. Through analysis of students’ communication, the purpose is to better understand the physics laboratory work’s possibilities as a teaching and learning method. The results show that laboratory work consists of similar activities but differs in amount of time allocated to the different activities. Different types of talk are used for different purposes. An analytical framework has been created to enable deeper investigations of how and what students are talking about at both a linguistic and cognitive level. Moreover, the analysis shows the importance of students acquiring knowledge about physics and understanding the value of using an investigative approach as well as acquiring core content physics knowledge.

This thesis deals with the role of physics problems which help to develop various cognitive operations. Mainly the taxonomy of the learning tasks by Tollingerová and the Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives have been used for this purpose. A material which contains characteristics of eleven chosen cognitive operations (induction, deduction, transformation, proving, abstraction etc.) and two typical learning tasks to each cognitive operation has been elaborated in this thesis. The material was created to guide and simplify the selection and creation of physics problems whose solution supports the development of cognitive operations. This process can inter alia help to define, fill and check required educational goals. It may also help with student's motivation or the development of key competencies. Keywords: learning task, physics problem, cognitive operation, cognitive process, taxonomy by Tollingerová

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Physics / N. Sanjay Rebello / The work described here represents an effort to understand and influence visual attention while solving physics problems containing a diagram. Our visual system is guided by two types of processes -- top-down and bottom-up. The top-down processes are internal and determined by ones prior knowledge and goals. The bottom-up processes are external and determined by features of the visual stimuli such as color, and luminance contrast. When solving physics problems both top-down and bottom-up processes are active, but to varying degrees. The existence of two types of processes opens several interesting questions for physics education. For example, how do bottom-up processes influence problem solvers in physics? Can we leverage these processes to draw attention to relevant diagram areas and improve problem-solving? In this dissertation we discuss three studies that investigate these open questions and rely on eye movements as a primary data source. We assume that eye movements reflect a person’s moment-to-moment cognitive processes, providing a window into one’s thinking. In our first study, we compared the way correct and incorrect solvers viewed relevant and novice-like elements in a physics problem diagram. We found correct solvers spent more time attending to relevant areas while incorrect solvers spent more time looking at novice-like areas. In our second study, we overlaid these problems with dynamic visual cues to help students’ redirect their attention. We found that in some cases these visual cues improved problem-solving performance and influenced visual attention. To determine more precisely how the perceptual salience of diagram elements influenced solvers’ attention, we conducted a third study where we manipulated the perceptual salience of the diagram elements via changes in luminance contrast. These changes did not influence participants’ answers or visual attention. Instead, similar to our first study, the time spent looking in various areas of the diagram was related to the correctness of an answer. These results suggest that top-down processes dominate while solving physics problems. In sum, the study of visual attention and visual cueing in particular shows that attention is an important component of physics problem-solving and can potentially be leveraged to improve student performance.

As Histórias em Quadrinhos (HQ) vêm, há mais de um século, divertindo, informando e educando seus leitores. Seu código de formatação próprio e linguagem universal têm influenciado a formação cultural de várias gerações. Dado esse potencial, o presente trabalho enfoca a utilização das Histórias em Quadrinhos como instrumento para o ensino de física. Com essa perspectiva, apresenta-se nessa investigação uma proposta de utilização das HQ em sala de aula e analisa-se os resultados de sua implementação para o ensino do princípio da inércia. Embasados em um referencial construtivista de ensino, e partindo da hipótese de que a História em Quadrinhos apresenta uma série de características lúdicas e psico-lingüísticas apropriadas ao processo de ensino e aprendizagem, elaboramos uma HQ que buscasse instigar o aluno na busca da resolução de um problema envolvendo a 1a lei de Newton, procurando interpretar a influência desta proposta à luz da Teoria de Mudança Conceitual. Os dados do estudo, obtidos através de questionários, entrevistas, observações de aulas e documentos com cerca de 50 alunos de duas classes da oitava série do ensino fundamental, evidenciam resultados e indícios favoráveis quanto à aprendizagem do referido conceito científico, envolvimento e possibilidades de criatividade por parte dos alunos que utilizaram a História em Quadrinhos no ambiente escolar e à apropriação da proposta por parte da professora que aplicou o projeto em sala de aula. / The Comics Books, for more than one century, have been being entertaining, informing and teaching their readers. Their own formatation code and universal language have been influencing severals generations cultural formation. According to this potential, the present work emphasis the Comics Books usage as Physics teaching instrument. From this point of view, we are showing in this investigation an usage proposal of Comics Books during the classes, and we are, preliminary, analyzing the results of its implementation to the inertia principle teaching. Utilizing a construtivist theory of teaching, and supposing that Comic´s Books have several playing and psico-linguistics characteristics that can be used in the process of teaching and learning, we make a Comic Book that would instigate the student to solve a problem that involved the 1st Newton´s law, interpreting the influency of this proposition through the Conceptual Change´s Theory. The studying data, obtained through questionnaires, interviews, classes observations and documents with 50 students, approximately, of two classes from the last year of the elementary school, show us very favorable results and evidences in relation with the learning of scientific concept, involving e criative possibilites by the students that utilize the comics books in their school enviroment, and the proposal appropriation by the teacher who applies the project in the classes.

Esse trabalho tem como objetivo central investigar como o contexto sociocultural em que o aluno está inserido influencia sua maneira de se relacionar com o conhecimento científico. Para isso foram escolhidos 3 contextos distintos: uma escola particular da Zona Oeste de São Paulo (Escola Vera Cruz) e dois projetos de uma Organização não Governamental (ONG) chamada Instituto Acaia, que trabalha com estudantes de escolas públicas com perfis muito diferentes na Capital Paulista. Delimitados os contextos foram realizadas entrevistas, questionários e um conjunto de oficinas e/ou atividades educacionais visando observar como tais estudantes construíam modelos e por onde passavam seus respectivos pensamentos heurísticos. Em cada contexto foram escolhidos um conjunto diferente de atividades, visando estabelecer as propostas pedagógicas que mostravam de maneira mais clara como os estudantes pensavam e construíam modelos teóricos. Assim, optou-se por realizar 6 entrevistas semiestruturadas, um questionário virtual com cerca de 150 participantes, um questionário prévio com os alunos entrevistados e um conjunto de oficinas que colaboraram amplamente com as observações realizadas. Dentre as oficinas realizadas foram observados 3 trabalhos de campo (no Pantanal, no interior de São Paulo e no Vale do Ribeira), um projeto de ciência sobre a construção de instrumentos musicais, cursos eletivos de Astronomia e Física de Partículas, entre outros. A conclusão da pesquisa realizada abordou diversos âmbitos diretamente ligados ao processo educativo: a organização e estrutura do trabalho pedagógico, a influência do contexto sociocultural dos estudantes em seus processos de modelagem, a influência que esse contexto tem e deveria ter na construção curricular e, por fim, como isso impacta nas políticas públicas de larga escala. Possivelmente a principal ideia defendida nessa tese seja a necessidade da construção de um currículo e um curso de física menos propedêutico e mais epistemológico, visando contemplar questões relevantes nos contextos socioculturais dos estudantes. Neste sentido, a presente tese apoia-se nos conceitos de aprendizagem significativa de Ausubell e Zaballa, bem como na construção conceitual do socioconstrutivismo interativo amparado nas teorias de Lev Vygotsky e Charles Hadji. Dentre as muitas conclusões do trabalho destacam-se o papel da nota nas atividades propostas, a ruptura de preconceitos, o papel da linguagem como elemento estruturante do pensamento científico e a importância da construção de sentidos externos ao curso na mobilização dos estudantes de ensino médio. / The main aim of this work is to investigate the socio-cultural context in which the students are inserted and its influences in their way of relating to scientific knowledge. For that, three different contexts were chosen: a private school in West Zone of São Paulo (School Vera Cruz) and two projects of a non-governmental organization (NGO) called Acaia Institute, which works with students from public schools with very different profiles in São Paulo. With the context established, interviews, questionnaires and a set of workshops (and / or educational activities) were conducted in order to observe how students of these contexts built models and the pathway of their respective heuristic thoughts. In each context were chosen different set of activities in order to establish the educational proposals that could show more clearly how students thought and built theoretical models. Thus, it was decided to hold 6 semi-structured interviews, a virtual questionnaire with about 150 participants, a previous questionnaire with interviewed students and a set of workshops, cooperating extensively with the observations. Among the workshops, it were observed 3 external activities (at Pantanal, in the country side of São Paulo and in the \"Vale do Ribeira\"), a science project about the construction of musical instruments, elective courses of Astronomy and Particle Physics, among others. The conclusion of the survey covered many areas directly related to the educational process: the organization and structure of pedagogical work, the influence of socio-cultural context of the students in their modeling process, the influence that the context has and should have in the curriculum construction, and, finally, how it impacts public policy in a large scale. Probably the main idea defended in this thesis is the need to build a resume and a physics course less propaedeutic and more epistemological, seeking to include relevant issues in socio-cultural contexts of students. In this sense, this thesis relies on the concepts of meaningful learning from Ausubell and Zaballa as well as on the conceptual construction of interactive socio-constructivism supported by Lev Vygotsky and Charles Hadji theories. Among the many findings of the present work, is the role of grades in the proposed activities, the breaking of prejudices, the role of language as a structural element of scientific thought and the importance of building external senses to the course in the mobilization of high school students.