July 2, 2010. From Kathy Harper, physics education researcher, Modeling
Workshop organizer and workshop leader at The Ohio State University.
Here are the articles we have used in the past couple of years with our
workshops. We are in the process of adjusting these a bit. Listed are all articles,
including the ones that are typically part of the binders. I’ve annotated ones that
you typically haven’t used.
In our introductory workshops, we have the participants read about one article a
night and write a one-page reflection (NOT a summary) to it. These count for
20% of the grade. In the curriculum workshop, we don’t have them write
reflections. We figure they are doing plenty of work outside of class on their units
already.
I handed out a new reading this year called “Quick Before it Dries” and will
probably include it in all introductory materials next year: Adams, “Quick Before
it Dries: Setting the Pattern for Active Participation From Day One,” available at
http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/teachlearn/resources/guides/quick/index.html
MECHANICS MODELING WORKSHOP:
Readings from the first 3 chapters of Arons are sprinkled throughout.
Mestre, “Learning and Instruction in Pre-College Physical Science”
Trowbridge, D. E. & McDermott, L. C., "Investigation of Student
Understanding of the Concept of Velocity in One Dimension," AJP 48,
1020-1028 (1980).
This shows participants some concrete examples of student misconceptions in a
way that's tough to argue with. I think it's particularly illuminating for some of the
"crustier" teachers. It also gives them a feeling for how we get PER results.
Thornton & Sokoloff,”Learning Motion Concepts Using Real-time MBL Tools”
McDermott, “How We Teach and How Students Learn – a Mismatch?”
Wells, Hestenes, Swackhamer, , “A Modeling Method for High School Physics
Instruction” (AJP, 1995)
Minstrell, “Explaining the At Rest Condition of An Object”
Hake, “Socratic Pedagogy in the Introductory Physics Laboratory”
Van Heuvelen, A., "Learning to Think Like a Physicist: A Review of
1
Research-based instructional Strategies," AJP 59, 891-897 (1991).
I like this article because I think it presents a slightly different take on the same
basic ideas that we're trying to get through to the teachers. It also provides a
nice platform to tell them about the ALPS (although these seem to be out of print
now). It also helps make a connection between what we do in the workshop and
problem solving, which is always a concern of participants.
Van Heuvelen, A. & Zou, X., "Multiple Representations of Work-Energy
Processes," AJP 69, 184-194 (2001).
This is one of the most valuable readings we use. So many of our participants
haven't seen work-energy bar charts before, and this helps to sell them on it. (I
highly recommend this one!)
Swackhamer, “Making Work Work”
We also include some other articles in our binder that we sometimes refer to –
they also work well for a “make-up” assignment should someone have to miss a
few hours of class at some point. They include
Maloney, "Rule-governed Approaches to Physics - Newton's Third Law,"
This one is nice because it addresses the common student difficulties with N3L. It
also exposes the teachers to a systematic way of looking at how a series of
questions can probe for a consistently used wrong idea.
Hammer, “Two Approaches to Learning Physics,”
Beichner, “Test of Understanding Graphs – Kinematics”
Reif, “Teaching Problem Solving, a Scientific Approach”
CHEMISTRY
Gabel, “Improving Teaching and Learning through Chemistry Education
Research”
Harrison & Treagust, “Secondary Students’ Mental Models of Atoms and
Molecules: Implications for Teaching Chemistry”
Wells, Hestenes, & Swackhamer, “A Modeling Method for High School Physics
Instruction” (AJP, 1995)
2
Swackhamer, “Cognitive Resources for Understanding Energy”
Bowen & Bunce, “Testing for Conceptual Understanding in General Chemistry”
Gillespie, “The Great Ideas of Chemistry”
Kind, “Beyond Appearances, Students’ Misconceptions About Basic Chemical
Ideas”
There are also readings from Karplus sprinkled in.
THE ADVANCED CURRICULUM-WRITING WORKSHOP
WE ALWAYS USE THESE THREE ON ALTERNATIVE PROBLEMS IN OUR
2ND-YEAR WORKSHOP:
Van Heuvelen, A. & Maloney, D. P., "Playing Physics Jeopardy," AJP 67,
252-256 (1999).
Maloney, D. P., "Ranking Tasks, A New Type of Test Item," JCST 510-514
(1987).
Van Heuvelen, A., Allen, L., & Mihas, P., "Experiment Problems for Electricity
and Magnetism," or Van Heuvelen, “Experiment Problems for Mechanics”
We have worked hard to get the balance right between letting our secondyear curriculum development groups run with their project and providing some
structure to help them stay on task and develop a sound product. With input
from Doug Forrest, Heidi (Jackman) Kresge, and Nate Ash, we have turned this
into a workshop that gets rave reviews. The participants this year generated
some terrific products. We are looking to add someone with more advanced
chemistry experience to the staff next year.
Anyway, one of the things that we've done is come up with a list of "required
elements" for the final unit, and when it's something that might be a little new for
folks, we try to find a reading to match up with it and give them a little homework
assignment. So we're scaffolding the unit development a bit. One of the things
that (as you might guess) I'm big on is alternative problem types that are actually
based on what we know about how experts and novices approach problems. We
have the teachers read these three articles, usually 3 nights in a row, and usually
starting around the end of the first week. A day or so after they've read all of
them, we have everyone turn in 2 alternative problems (in any combination of
types they wish), give them feedback, and then they include them in their final
3
unit. This has worked out well for us.
I really like all of these articles. We may get rid of the experiment problem
one, though, since it is nearly the same thing as a practicum. We have
contemplated using one of the Heller articles that involves context-rich problems,
too, but I don't remember if we ever have. We have handed it out to individuals.
I am contemplating adding the recent Physics Teacher article by Maloney and
Masters on reverse game play as an opportunity to illustrate scientific process
because I think it could be helpful.
As the advanced workshop and the Ohio Modeling program have developed
further, we have had to change the way in which we use articles in the advanced
workshop. We now have about half of our participants coming in to do chemistry
projects, which has been a challenge for me, as a physicist. We are constantly
striving to have less of a physics focus in the readings we assign, and when we
know of a content-specific article, we often just give it to the relevant group for
their reference. Below are ones we have used associated with specific topics
OPTICS:
Watts, D. M., "Student Conceptions of Light: A Case Study," Phys. Ed. 20,
183-187 (1985).
It's a neat little easy-to-read article that, again, I think shows even the most
experienced teachers some new ways their students may be thinking about
optics. Doug and I liked it enough that we had them read it one year when
everyone was still from physics, even though no one was working on optics.
ELECTRICITY:
N. Fredette and J. Lochhead, "Student Conceptions of Simple Electric Circuits",
The Physics Teacher 19, 194-198 (1980) 194-198
This is easy to read and helps teachers to think about what might be going on in
students' heads.
Bat-Sheva Eylon & Uri Ganiel, "Macro-micro Relationships: the Missing Links",
International Journal of Science Education 12(1) 79 - 94 (1990). This article is a
tough read, used only with a fairly experienced group.
MAGNETISM:
David P. Maloney, "Charged poles?" Physics Education 20, 310-316 (1985) (on
magnetism)
An easy read, and a neat illustration of some work that is closely related to
4
ranking tasks.
EQUILIBRIUM
Raviolo, “Assessing Students’ Conceptual Understanding of Solubility
Equilibrium”
ENTROPY
Hanson & Michalek, “Give Them Money: The Bolzmann Game”
Lambert, “Entropy – A Cracked Crutch for Supporting Entropy Discussions”
Lambert, “Entropy is Simple, Qualitatively”
5