Postdoctoral Fellowship: STEMEdIPRF: Exploring the use of mechanistic reasoning in undergraduate physiology education

该项目旨在通过探索学生如何在生理学研究中发展和使用机械推理来服务于国家利益。 科学中最基本的核心能力之一是机械推理，这是一种强大的思维形式，它解决了系统的基本组成部分如何以及为什么会产生现象。 该项目计划专门探索机械推理如何在生理学研究中发展，这是大多数希望从事医疗保健职业的本科生所学习的课程。 机械推理是科学推理的一种形式，使学习者能够对复杂现象产生强有力的预测和有力的解释。 通过采访具有不同生理学经验水平的个人，例如，本科生，医学生和生理学或护理学教师，该项目希望揭示机械推理如何在这些不同的专业知识水平上使用，其广泛目标是增强本科生生理学教学，以有效地解决机械推理。 通过将教学重点放在机械推理上，学生可以减少对记忆的依赖，并培养简化复杂问题的能力，帮助他们在课程中取得成功。以前的机械推理工作主要集中在简单的系统上，但生理学中的现象是复杂的，相互关联的。 这些现象涉及多个标量层次的实体，并借鉴了多个学科的概念。 拟议的项目将通过与具有一系列生理学专业知识的个人进行半结构化访谈来研究机械推理。 个人将被要求通过复杂的现象大声思考，并解释他们理解未知事物的一般方法。 这些数据将被用来识别模式的方式本科生理学学生使用机械推理，并比较本科生的推理那些更专家，从而加深了解如何机械推理的发展，以及如何有效地解决机械理性的核心思想在本科生理学教育。 该项目由STEM教育博士后研究奖学金资助（干艾德PRF）计划，旨在提高研究知识，技能，并在干，干教育，教育，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得支持的，使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。

This project aims to serve the national interest by exploring how students develop and use mechanistic reasoning in their study of physiology. One of the most fundamental core competencies in science is mechanistic reasoning, a powerful form of thinking that addresses how and why the underlying components of a system give rise to phenomena. The project plans specifically to explore how mechanistic reasoning evolves in the study of physiology, a course taken by most undergraduate students hoping to pursue careers in healthcare. Mechanistic reasoning is a form of scientific reasoning that enables learners to generate powerful predictions and robust explanations for complex phenomena. By interviewing individuals with differing levels of physiology experience, for example, undergraduate students, medical students, and physiology or nursing faculty, the project hopes to uncover how mechanistic reasoning is used at these various levels of expertise, with the broad goal of enhancing undergraduate physiology instruction to effectively address mechanistic reasoning. By focusing instruction on mechanistic reasoning, students may rely less on memorization and develop the ability to simplify complex problems, helping them to succeed in their coursework.Previous work on mechanistic reasoning has focused primarily on simple systems, but the phenomena in physiology are complex and interrelated. Such phenomena involve entities at multiple scalar levels and draw on concepts from multiple disciplines. The proposed project will investigate mechanistic reasoning by conducting semi-structured interviews with individuals with a range of physiology expertise. Individuals will be asked to both think aloud through complex phenomena and explain their general approaches to making sense of the unknown. These data will be used to identify patterns in the ways undergraduate physiology students use mechanistic reasoning and to compare undergraduate students’ reasoning to those more expert, leading to an enhanced understanding of how mechanistic reasoning develops and how to effectively address the core idea of mechanistic reason in undergraduate physiology education. This project is funded by the STEM Education Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (STEM Ed PRF) program that aims to enhance the research knowledge, skills, and practices of recent doctorates in STEM, STEM education, education, and related disciplines to advance their preparation to engage in fundamental and applied research that advances knowledge within the field.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.