CAREER: Physics Education Research and Contexts of Student Learning

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Why do university students exit courses capable of solving difficult analytic problems (e.g., calculate current in a complex circuit), but are unable to explain the same content conceptually (e.g., which light bulb is brighter in such a circuit)? Which educational activities address this challenge and why?Building on the well-established foundations of physics education research that have focused on student cognition, curriculum design and course practices, this research program establishes another perspective from which we may understand student learning in physics: one that emphasizes learning in context. That is, how and what students learn depends not only on traditionally conceived content but also upon the formation of tasks, class environments, and broader institutional structures in which the content is embedded. Such a perspective begins to explain a host of research questions, such as the one listed above, and is directed at understanding sustainable and scalable models of reform in physics education.This project coordinates two levels of research on the role of context in student learning: the level of individual students and the level of course activities. Many of the associated research questions are new in physics (e.g., examining the effects of having students teach others in order to learn) while others augment existing lines of research (e.g., the role of computer simulations in the classroom). Collectively, these investigations provide a framework for understanding each of the individual research studies, as well as the portability of the results of these studies to other environments. Furthermore, their coordinated outcomes will result in meaningful models of context in student learning, which will serve as the foundation for long-term research in this area. This research is designed to improve educational practices in physics and to better understand how to make them sustainable and scalable.