Modeling Understanding to Study Conceptual Change in Learning Physics....

这个项目将调查现有的例子，概念变化的一系列主题在物理学，以辨别不同类型的概念变化，并确定有效地诱导他们的教学策略。其结果将是一个分类的概念变化的关联类型的概念变化与教学策略，以促进变化过程。这些策略将根据调查人员的课堂经验和对学生概念和概念变化的当前工作的仔细研究，以及力学历史上概念变化的选定例子来制定。实地工作将通过各种访谈和诊断方法以及基于计算的协议分析收集有关学生概念的信息，包括使用计算语言学，术语聚类和知识表示。这项工作将为建立概念表征提供信息，这些表征将明确描述学生概念中对概念变化过程至关重要的特定元素和组织。将展示自然语言处理和其他计算分析在提取信息和发展概念表示方面的效用。这些技术将指导概念变化分类法的构建。这项研究将产生几个结果：1）对理解物理和解决物理问题中的角色概念有了更深刻的理解，证明了物理教学的任务是改变信念系统而不仅仅是传授事实和解决问题的技能，2）对替代概念和概念变化的性质进行更详细的分析;一个分类的概念变化与策略，似乎诱导特定类型的概念变化，可以指导教师在课堂上。

This project will investigate existing examples of conceptual change over a range of topics in physics in order to discern different types of conceptual change and to identify instructional strategies effective at inducing them. The result will be a taxonomy of conceptual change which associates types of conceptual change with instructional strategies to facilitate the change process. These strategies will be developed on the basis of the investigators' classroom experience and a careful study of current work in student conceptions and conceptual change, as well as selected examples of conceptual change in the history of mechanics. The field work will gather information about students' conceptions through various interview and diagnostic methods as well as computationally- based protocol analysis, including use of computational linguistics, term clustering and knowledge representation. This work will provide information for building conceptual representations which will explicitly depict particular elements and organizations of students' conceptions that are critical to the process of conceptual change. The utility of natural language processing and other computational analyses in extracting information and the development of conceptual representations will be demonstrated. These techniques will guide the construction of the conceptual change taxonomy. This research will have several outcomes: 1) a deeper understanding of the role conceptions in understanding physics and solving physics problems, demonstrating that the task of physics instruction is one of changing belief systems and not merely one of imparting facts and problem- solving skills, 2) a more detailed analysis of alternative conceptions and the nature of conceptual change and 3) a taxonomy of conceptual change associated with strategies which seem to induce particular types of conceptual change that can guide teachers in the classroom.