Replicating and understanding successful innovations: Implementing tutorials in introductory physics

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14. The ideas of adoption, adaptation, reinvention, and invention are borrowed from Henderson. (Ref. [10]).
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26. Researchers at the University of Maryland have found similar results. Using the UW tutorial approach described above, Redish and colleagues demonstrated that with modifications involving microcomputer-based laboratories, students demonstrated significantly greater improvement on the Force Concept Inventory than those students who did not use Maryland tutorials.
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31. STEM Colorado is part of the NSF Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)-Teacher Preparation program.
32. These pretests were served over the web and hosted by the University of Washington Physics Education Group. They are “pre” tutorial (but generally after clasroom or lecture instruction).
33. Student participation on pretests accounted for 2.5% of their overall course grade.
34. As part of the NSF-funded STEM-TP program, LAs enroll in a course, Educational Philosophy, Theory, and Practice, offered by the School of Education.
35. These build on ideas and concepts raised in the in-recitation tutorial activity.
36. Specifically, weekly tutorials covered acceleration in one dimension (1D), motion in two dimensions, forces, Newton’s second and third laws, tension, work and the work-energy theorem, relative motion, a modified conservation of momentum in 1D (modified version provided by UW PEG), rotational motion, dynamics of rigid bodies, simple harmonic motion (modified version provided by UW PEG), and superposition and reflection of pulses.
37. These questions came both from published work (Refs. [21–25]) and from their large database of questions used to develop and assess the impact of tutorials.
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41. R. K. Thornton, D. Kuhl, K. Cumming, and J. Marx (private communication).
42. Notably, most in-class (“click”) questions are answered collaboratively. Asking a question individually, hiding the results, and immediately following up with a 2-minute conversation typically increases scores by about 20–40 % (Ref. [12]). The exam results, which are answered individually, therefore represent a larger gain than may first appear.
43. In the UW data, the authors present the percentage of the class reporting the correct answer with the correct reasoning. The CU data report the average score of students (graded for correctness including reasoning). While these differing approaches could lead to different findings for differing statistical distribution of student responses, we have observed on sample questions that our measure of student scores generally matches the measure of the fraction of students scoring correctly on these questions, within the reported measurement uncertainty of 5%.
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48. The concepts category refers to a portion of sense-making activity where understanding physics includes understanding the broader conceptual framing of the problems at hand. Questions include, “When I solve a physics problem, I explicitly think about which physics ideas apply to the problem” (Ref. [45]).
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50. Such a perspective draws from the sociocultural school of psychology and learning and particularly draws from the work of Cole [M. Cole, Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001)].
51. A variety of perspectives on individual cognition, from a resources model [A. A. di Sessa, Cogn. Instruct. 10, 105 (1993)]; to classical mental constructs [D. E. Ruumethart, in Theoretical Issues in Preceding Comprehension, edited by R. J. Spono, B. C. Bruce, and W. C. Brewer (Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ, 1980)], have been quite productive in the PER community for developing models of student learning in physics.
52. Furthermore, it is worthy of note that students participating in tutorials participate in many other contextual frames. Participants, students, TAs, LAs, and the instructor are all members of various cultural groups, family structures, and social circles, each with it own sets of norms, beliefs, situations, and particular tasks. One of our goals in the course is to recognize and value these historically developed and productive sets of norms and practices [L. Moll, C. Amanti, D. Neff, and N. Gonzalez, Theory Pract. 31, 132 (1992)]. While we could analyze any number of sets of nested frames of context, in order to analyze critical elements of the tutorials, we find it useful to consider a particular perspective common to the students, instructor, and broader institution—notably the academic frame.
53. J. Clement, J. Res. Sci. Teach. 30, 1241 (1993).
54. That is, not only do the material artifacts of the tutorial worksheets carry with them a particular representation of physics (well vetted by science and history) and pedagogy, but carry with them an understanding of students (what they know and how they know). For example, the particular tasks are designed to elicit common conceptions of the world that students have. A second example is that there are few references to real-world or personal activities. This approach promotes a more abstracted and disconnected way of knowing, which addresses different populations of students differently [M. Dancy, in Proceedings of the 2003 Physics Education Research Conference, edited by J. Marx, S. Franklin, and K. Cummings, AIP Conf. Proc. No. 720 (AIP, New York), p. 39].
55. F. J. James, in Proceedings of the 129th AAPT National Meeting, Sacramento, CA, 2004 (unpublished).
56. It is at the level of situation that we might understand why we might only compare UW and CU student conceptual mastery to 5%. While particular questions might be identical, the situation in which these questions are asked [where these questions are asked (exam, or in class), the question order (which questions precede and follow), and answer order within the questions] all affect student performance (Ref. [3]). While the particular tasks may be similar (answer a particular multiple-choice question), the situations in which these occur vary dramatically enough to recontextualize the tasks (and hence student performance).
57. Such expectations arise from and shape the surrounding culture of the tutorials and physics course. Notably, while productive for situations conducive of educational tasks, such expectations sit at odds with other educational cultures in which students have participated.
58. L. S. Shulman, Harv. Educ. Rev. 57, 1 (1987).
59. Notably the inclusion and training of the tutorial leaders occurs through an apprenticeship model [J. Lave and F. Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Cambridge University Press, New York, 1991)], whereby they begin to takeownership of the activities that occur.
60. G. A. Fine, With the Boys (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987).
61. P. Hutchings and L. S. Shulman, Change 31, 10 (1999).
62. Though these “habits” might be considered more global than simply existing within a microculture such as a course.
63. D. Hammer, A. Elby, R. E. Scherr, and E. F. Redish, in Transfer of Learning: Research and Perspectives, edited by J. Mestre (Information Age Publishing, Greenwich, CT, 2005).
64. M. Dancy and C. Henderson, Proceedings of the 2004 Physics Education Research Conference edited by J. Marx, P. Heron, and S. Franklin, AIP Conf. Proc. (to be published).
65. N. D. Finkelstein, J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 33, 37 (2003).
66. N. D. Finkelstein, Jou. Scholar. Tech. Lear. 4, 1 (2004).
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