Unpacking students’ use of mathematics in upper-division physics: where do we go from here?
Unpacking students’ use of mathematics in upper-division physics: where do we go from here?
复制标题
解析学生在高年级物理中对数学的运用：我们下一步该何去何从？
DOI：
10.1088/0143-0807/36/6/065004
复制
发表时间：
2014
影响因子：
0.7
通讯作者：
S. Pollock
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Marcos D. Caballero;Bethany R. Wilcox;Leanne Doughty;S. Pollock
在大学一年级之后的物理学习中（在美国被称为高年级），许多学生的主要学习机会来自解决长期、复杂的书本式问题，以及尝试通过解决这些问题来加深对基础物理的理解。高年级的一些研究侧重于学生如何在这些问题中使用数学，以及学生在此过程中遇到的挑战。关于学生在高年级使用数学的情况有许多不同的研究。这些通常采用两种主要方法之一，一些研究人员主要寻找并解决学生面临的挑战，而另一些研究人员主要致力于解开学生当下的推理。在本文中，我们介绍并讨论了这两种方法，然后回顾了努力将这两种方法联系起来的研究工作，以便理解学生对数学的使用，并发现学生遇到的特殊挑战。最近的这些努力代表了综合这两种方法的一小步，我们认为这对于更有意义地影响高年级学生的学习是必要的。我们以对未来研究问题的改进建议来结束我们的审查和讨论，供物理教育研究界在努力了解学生如何在高年级课程中使用数学的同时考虑。
In their study of physics beyond the first year of University—termed upper-division in the US, many of students’ primary learning opportunities come from working long, complex back-of-the-book style problems, and from trying to develop an understanding of the underlying physics through solving such problems. Some of the research at the upper-division focuses on how students use mathematics in these problems, and what challenges students encounter along the way. There are a number of different and diverse research studies on students’ use of mathematics in the upper-division. These typically utilize one of two broad approaches, with some researchers primarily seeking out and addressing challenges students face, and others working chiefly to unpack students’ in-the-moment reasoning. In this paper, we present and discuss both approaches, and then review research efforts that strive to connect these two approaches in order to make sense of students’ use of mathematics as well as to uncover particular challenges that students encounter. These recent efforts represent a small step towards synthesizing the two approaches, which we argue is necessary to more meaningfully impact student learning at the upper-division. We close our review and discussion with suggested refinements for future research questions for the physics education research community to consider while it works to understand how students use math in upper-division courses.