Modeling Understanding to Guide Conceptual Change in Learning Physics

这个项目将调查物理学中一系列主题中现有的概念变化的例子，以辨别不同类型的概念变化，并确定有效地诱导它们的教学策略。其结果将是一个概念变化的分类法，它将概念变化的类型与促进变化过程的教学策略联系起来。这些策略将基于研究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，以及力学历史上选定的概念变化的例子而制定。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关于学生概念的信息，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，这些概念表征将明确描述学生概念的特定元素和组织，这些元素和组织对概念变化过程至关重要。本课程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征方面的作用。这些技术将指导概念变化分类法的构建。这项研究将有几个结果：1)加深对概念在理解物理和解决物理问题中的作用的理解，表明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)对可供选择的概念和概念变化的性质进行更详细的分析；3)对概念变化进行分类，这些分类与策略有关，这些策略似乎可以诱导特定类型的概念变化，以指导课堂上的教师。

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 explictly 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 computional 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 of 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.