Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Physics / Dean A. Zollman / This research presents an investigation of how students dynamically construct
knowledge in a new situation. In particular, this work focuses on the contexts of light and optics,
and examines the dynamic construction of an understanding of wavefront aberrometry.
The study began with clinical interviews designed to elicit students’ prior knowledge
about light, basic optics, and vision; the data were analyzed phenomenographically to obtain
student models of understanding and examine the possible model variations. The results indicate
that students have a significant number of resources in this subject area, though some are
incomplete or less useful than others.
In subsequent phases, many learning and teaching interviews were conducted to design
and test scaffolding procedures that could be of use to students as they constructed their
understanding of the given phenomenon. Throughout this work, student responses were
analyzed in terms of the resources that were being used through the knowledge construction
process.
Finally, a modified analysis method is presented and utilized for quantifying what types
of concepts students use while constructing their understanding, and how they are able to link
varying types of concepts together.
Significant implications extend beyond the single context of wavefront aberrometry.
Each distinct analysis technique provides further insight to the ways in which students learn
across contexts and the ways in which we can scaffold their learning to improve curriculum and
instruction.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:KSU/oai:krex.k-state.edu:2097/1330 |
| Date | January 1900 |
| Creators | McBride, Dyan L. |
| Publisher | Kansas State University |
| Source Sets | K-State Research Exchange |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
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