CAREER: Physics Education Research and Contexts of Student Learning

为什么大学生退出了能够解决解析难题(例如，计算复杂电路中的电流)的课程，但无法从概念上解释相同的内容(例如，在这样的电路中，哪个灯泡更亮)？哪些教育活动应对这一挑战？为什么？这个研究项目建立在关注学生认知、课程设计和课程实践的物理教育研究的坚实基础上，建立了另一个我们可以理解学生在物理学习中的视角：强调在情境中学习。也就是说，学生学习的方式和内容不仅取决于传统上构思的内容，还取决于任务的形成、课堂环境和内容嵌入其中的更广泛的制度结构。这样的观点开始解释许多研究问题，如上面列出的问题，并旨在理解可持续和可扩展的物理教育改革模式。这个项目协调了关于背景在学生学习中的作用的两个层次的研究：个人学生水平和课程活动水平。许多相关的研究问题在物理学中是新的(例如，考察让学生为了学习而教别人的效果)，而另一些问题则扩大了现有的研究范围(例如，计算机模拟在课堂上的作用)。总体而言，这些调查为理解每一项单独的研究研究以及将这些研究的结果移植到其他环境提供了一个框架。此外，它们的协调结果将在学生学习中产生有意义的背景模型，这将成为这一领域长期研究的基础。这项研究旨在改善物理教育实践，并更好地了解如何使其可持续和可扩展。

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.