Collaborative Research: University Student Conceptual Resources for Understanding Physics

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This project aims to help physics instructors: (a) value student's intuitive thinking and (b) improve their instruction by building on those student intuitions. The project is grounded in the premises that students bring stores of ideas about the physical world to the classroom, and taking into account these ideas, however informal, can improve their learning. This project will develop instructional materials in forces, waves and optics, and the particle nature of matter that utilize students' intuitive ideas. Researchers have taken very different stances toward students' intuitive knowledge. The misconceptions theory of knowledge takes the stance that students' intuitive understandings are often inconsistent with the scientific consensus and thus are obstacles to learning unless addressed. From this perspective student knowledge is relatively rigid and mostly context-independent. Thus researchers search for common, incorrect patterns in student thinking, and instructors elicit, confront, and resolve misconceptions. Alternatively, according to the resources theory of knowledge: 1) students' intuitive understandings develop from their experiences of the physical world and 2) student knowledge is dynamic and context-dependent. Hence, researchers should attend to productive and potentially useful student intuitions on which instructors can build. While instructors and researchers need not ascribe to a single theory of knowledge, misconceptions research has had a more pronounced impact on physics education research and instruction than resources research. This project has the long-term goal of promoting instructor adoption of this second perspective, the resources theory of knowledge. Researchers will first document the common, prevalent resources that students marshal to reason about physics. Then they will develop instructional materials that embed a resources orientation toward student thinking and build on the resources they document. The PI team will also test the effectiveness of these instructional materials in improving students' conceptual understanding. The STEM education community is embracing resources-oriented instruction for reasons of equity and agency. Framing students' intuitive physics ideas as misconceptions disadvantages students from diverse cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic communities. Conversely, framing student ideas as resources -- as "productive beginnings" of more sophisticated thinking -- has the potential to broaden participation in physics.