Patsy Ann Giese, Professor

Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania

Slippery Rock, PA 16057-1326

USA

telephone (412) 738-2317 or (412) 738-2041

fax (412) 738-2880

e-mail patsy.johnson@sru.edu

This file PIPS-ARG.RTF was written using Microsoft Word for Windows, Version 2, for IBM computers.

Dr. Patsy Ann Giese, Professor

Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania

Slippery Rock, PA 16057-1326

USA

telephone (412) 738-2317 or (412) 738-2041

fax (412) 738-2880

e-mail patsy.johnson@sru.edu

This paper supplements the paper Powerful Ideas in Physical Science (Part 1): Development and Dissemination written by Robert H. Poel. The American Association of Physics Teachers has published an innovative teaching tool for college and university faculty who instruct prospective elementary teachers and other non-science majors. This manual is designed so that students' pages may be selected and revised to make the course model most appropriate for particular institutions and student populations. In the Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania undergraduate course structured around activities described in this manual, students are engaged in both individual and cooperative projects for learning concepts in physical science. Classroom activities elicit existing students' conceptions, allow students to test these ideas against observable events using everyday materials, and inspire more effective explanations or models whenever events do not match predictions. Group work, examinations, journals, and portfolios are the assessment measures used.

At Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, the undergraduate course Physics 103 is titled Investigating Matter and Energy. I chose this course title because it describes concisely what is done in this course. This is an activity-based and discussion-oriented course designed for non-science majors. Students in this course are freshman through seniors, with more students near the start of their college experience than near the end. There are no prerequisites for this course.

Physics 103 is structured around activities described in the manual Powerful Ideas in Physical Science published by the American Association of Physics Teachers. Myself and eleven others--Dominique P. Casavant, Robert Beck Clark, Dewey I. Dykstra, Dorothy L. Gabel, Fred M. Goldberg, Sandra H. Harpole, John W. Layman, Van E. Neie, Robert H. Poel, Wayne Sukow, and Leon Ukens--wrote this manual. In addition, Jack G. Hehn, Bernard V. Khoury, Donald F. Kirwan, and Gayle M. Kirwan worked on this project, which was funded by the National Science Foundation under the grant Physical Science Instruction of Preservice Elementary Teachers (PSI-PET) to develop a model course in which students would experience the kind of science instruction that they would later be expected to give in elementary schools.

Constructivism was an explicit basis for this for this project from its inception. Ernst von Glasersfeld's ideas influenced our work, and he (1993, p. 24) refers to them as "postepistemological" because his radical constructivism posits a different relationship between knowledge and the external world than does traditional epistemology. The basic principles of radical constructivism are the following:

1. Knowledge is not passively received either through the senses or by way of communication, but it is actively built up by the cognising subject.

2. The function of cognition is adaptive and serves the subject's organization of the experiential world, not the discovery of an objective ontological reality. (von Glasersfeld, 1988, p. 83)

A constructivist view does not lead to a simple, uncontested set of rules for pedagogical practice. General agreement is that students need interaction with the physical world and with their peers to stimulate meaning-making. Realizing that students' expectations affect their observations and that multiple approaches to problem solving are acceptable, the teacher monitors students' understandings, requests from them evidence and justification, provides constraints for their thinking, and gives them opportunities to represent their knowledge. The teacher's role also includes introducing, when necessary, new ways of thinking about phenomena and working with symbols. Then the teacher guides and supports students as they make sense of these ideas and tools for themselves (Driver, 1995; Driver, Asoko, Leach, Mortimer, & Scott, 1994; Duit, 1995; Lewin, 1995; Rubin, 1995; Tobin & Tippins, 1993; von Glasersfeld, 1995).

Theories about conceptual change have been built on constructivist principles. Conceptual change can be subdivided into differentiation in which new concepts emerge from more general concepts, class extension in which existing concepts become cases of another subsuming concept, and re-conceptualization in which nature of and relationship between concepts changes significantly (Dykstra, Boyle and Monarch, 1992). After dissatisfaction with existing conceptions, requirements for conceptual change are that the new conception be intelligible, plausible, and fruitful (Posner, Strike, Hewson, & Gertzog, 1982). The status of a conception is increased as more of these three conditions are met (Hewson, 1996).

The pedagogical principles the Powerful Ideas in Physical Science Development Group agreed upon from our mental constructions of constructivism were the following:

1. Prior to instruction, students have beliefs about the physical world, about the roles of students and teachers, and about the nature of science. All of these beliefs influence what students learn.

2. Dissatisfaction with existing ideas causes students to recognize their need to organize their conceptions, make new connections, and build new conceptions.

3. The learner must recognize the status of his or her current conceptions before evaluating their utility and choosing to reconstruct these conceptions (AAPT, 1995).

With these principles as a basis, student pages as well as instructor notes were written. The four units in these materials are Light and Color, Electricity, Heat and the Conservation of Energy, and Nature of Matter. Each unit is composed of six or seven Investigations, and each Investigation includes several classroom activities.

A second basis for the Powerful Ideas in Physical Science project was research studies showing that cooperative situations--more than individual and competitive situations--raise academic achievement, create positive relationships between individuals (both students and faculty), foster psychological well-being, and form favorable attitudes toward science. Cooperative learning groups can be distinguished from traditional learning groups by the following characteristics: positive interdependence, individual accountability, heterogeneous abilities and characteristics of group members, shared leadership, shared responsibility for each other's learning, both task to be accomplished and maintenance of productive group relations emphasized, social skills directly taught by the teacher, group functioning observed by the teacher with occasional intervention, and effectiveness processed by groups (Johnson, Johnson, Holubec, & Roy, 1984).

Cooperative skills developed and practiced by students during Powerful Ideas in Physical Science activities include summarizing out loud, seeking elaboration, criticizing ideas (not people), asking for justification, and integrating ideas (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 1987). These same skills are required of students to establish instruction based on constructivist learning theory (Fosnot, 1996) including a classroom climate in which teaching for conceptual change may occur (Hewson, 1996). Therefore, the two bases of constructivism and cooperative learning theory reinforce each other rather than establish two nonintersecting sets of criteria for curriculum development.

Slippery Rock University students taking Physics 103 earn three semester hours of credit by coming to two-hour class sessions for a total of twenty-nine sessions scheduled over fifteen weeks. Twenty-four students are registered in each section of this course. Each student buys a laboratory manual made by selecting activity sheets from Powerful Ideas in Physical Science. (The current price is $3.) Students work much of the time in six groups comprised of four people sitting at one large laboratory table. Grades are earned based on the quality of journals, group work, examinations, and portfolios.

The first day of class each semester, students are given these directions on the Physics 103 course syllabus:

You are primarily responsible for constructing your own knowledge in this class through performing interesting activities to investigate scientific phenomena and through discussing these activities with your classmates in a meaningful manner. As you proceed, you are expected to think about the ideas you that you have developed from your prior experiences. You should monitor the change in your initial ideas as these ideas are challenged through activities and discussion.

A typical class session begins with students predicting what will happen when a particular equipment setup is used. On the Powerful Ideas in Physical Science student pages, there is room to draw or write about an activity's prediction under a section labeled What is Your Idea? Students are told to give their reasons for making their predictions, also. Next the class members clarify their ideas by expressing their own and by discovering alternatives. Students keep notes about this process in a section labeled What are the Group's Ideas? The instructor's penetrating questions are needed to guide this discussion, particularly to ensure that words with multiple meanings are used unambiguously. Often the consensus of small groups is reported to the whole class. An essential part of conceptual change is eliciting students' views. The What is Your Idea? and What are the Group's Ideas? sections of the Powerful Ideas in Physical Science student pages are a constant reminder to not skip over this stage as done in so many traditional classrooms.

Then students test their predictions through hands-on work or demonstrations. Laboratory equipment for this course is inexpensive and simple to use. Some of the materials are common items purchased at a grocery or department store. Students' results are recorded in the third section, which is called Making Observations. Thinking is focused on discrepancies between predictions and observations, and further experiments may be devised for testing the usefulness of modifications of initial ideas. The instructor must question discerningly, listen astutely, and explain judiciously. In addition, the instructor must encourage students to use these same behaviors in discussions with each other. Neither vague notions nor parroted word combinations can be accepted as evidence of learning. A Making Sense section is the final section for most activities. Students are expected to come to conclusions about the phenomena studied. New conceptions should be represented in as many forms as possible, for example, in words, symbols, numbers, graphs, diagrams, and pictures. At this point, the instructor may give some information about conventions and concepts developed by scientists. The instructor must decide, in each instance, whether it is better to give direction or to let a student struggle through a difficulty. Room is left in the right margin of the activity pages for students to add notes after they make their first responses. This may be done as they perform later activities or as they study outside of class. Occasionally, students are asked to reflect back over several activities in a section called What Can We Say So Far? These later sections fulfill requirements for conceptual change by giving students opportunities to increase their comprehension of new conceptions, come to believe the new conceptions, and be able to apply the new conception in various situations

Here is a hands-on example to illustrate the sections discussed above. In the Light and Color unit Activity L4.1 (AAPT, 1995), each student finds her or his near point of vision (the closest distance at which one can see clearly). Subsequently, Activity L5.1 begins by having each students look at her or his own reflection in a mirror. The What is Your Idea? and What are the Group's Ideas? sections ask "Where are your eyes focusing when looking at your reflection in the mirror?" In the Making Observations section, students are asked to use their near points in determining the location of their mirror images by comparing the clarity of a piece of tape on the mirror and a piece of tape on one of their cheeks. In the Making Sense section of Activity L5.1, they should conclude that their image is behind the mirror because the tapes on their cheeks will remain in focus longer than the tapes on the mirrors as they slowly bring the mirrors nearer to their faces. The same sections are used with demonstrations as in Activity M4.5 in the Nature of Matter unit. The What is Your Idea? and What are the Group's Ideas? sections ask "Does temperature affect the rate of dissolving?" For the Making Observations section, students watch their instructor dissolve potassium permanganate in cold water and in hot water. The Making Sense section asks for a picture that illustrates why particles dissolve faster in hot water than in cold water.

The following are some of the principles for assessment stated in the Powerful Ideas in Physical Science course manual (AAPT, 1995). Performance assessment measures (which elicit from students the behaviors targeted in curriculum goals) should be used more than objective tests (which elicit from students the behavior of choosing the correct response to multiple choice, true-false, and matching questions). To reduce rewards for memorization and routine skills and to increase rewards for critical thinking and complex problem solving, students should have access to books, calculators, and other sources of information during test taking and other assessment activities. Making diagrams and drawings should be encouraged. Some locus of control should rest with the student being assessed. Some assessment measures that allow for multiple correct responses or products should be used so students do not acquire the misconception that science questions, debates, and controversies always have one right answer. Assessment should draw on the strengths of a range of learning styles. Evaluation should be fair to all groups of students, with no biases due to characteristics like gender or race. Not all assessment should be done on an individual basis; instead some assessment should be done for cooperative learning groups of students. Behaviors assessed should be a representative sample of all the goal behaviors because any ability consistently slighted during assessment is regarded as unimportant by students.

Assessment, whether in conventional or alternative forms, should give evidence of students' notions about phenomena studied and should provide insight into students' logic for analyzing the world around them. Instructors need to build students' trust that no one will be penalized through grading or humiliation for expressing her or his ideas during the initial stages of learning about a topic. Questions given and graded at the conclusion of a unit should detect whether students are still holding onto naive ideas or are moving toward the powerful ideas presented in the units studied.

Assessment of group work accounts for 15% of a student's grade in Physics 103. On the course syllabus, students are given these directions:

Groups may be asked to complete a hands-on task, recording observations and inferences. They also may be asked to solve problems or answer open-ended questions. One set of answers and solutions will be turned in by each group. All members of the group will receive the same grade. It is the responsibility of each group to ensure that all members make substantial contributions to the formulation of the work turned in to be graded.

In these cooperative situations, students are given responsibility for others. They perceive that they can reach their learning goals if, and only if, the other students in their group succeed also. Students discuss material with each other, get immediate feedback on their ideas, assist one another in understanding the material, and encourage one another to work diligently. Intrinsic motivation is generated by interpersonal factors and joint aspirations.

The largest component of a student's grade in Physics 103 is the 45% based on answers to examination questions. These answers are written with no assistance from one's peers. On the course syllabus, students are given the following directions concerning examinations:

Exams will cover work done in the laboratory manual for this course. In addition, ideas stated in the required reading selections will be on the exams even though those ideas may not have been mentioned in class sessions. The recommended reading selections are useful, also, in preparing for exams. While taking exams, you may use your laboratory manual, copies of reading selections, notes, handouts, and calculator. However, you may not use your journal. Copy onto other paper anything you want to use out of your journal. Exams usually contain multiple choice and short-answer questions. In addition, you will be asked on each exam to write an essay giving your observations and inferences about either a hands-on activity done by you or a demonstration performed by your professor during the exam period.

Extraneous information is included in some word problems to test students' abilities to discriminate useful from unuseful information. Data-poor problems are used, also, for which students are told to state assumptions before proceeding to supply reasonable values for some quantities and then solve the problem.

The following is a typical word problem: "What is the equilibrium temperature after 45 mL of water at 65° C is mixed with 30 mL of boiling water? Include a temperature/mass diagram with your answer. Assume that no heat is lost or gained from the surroundings of this water mixture." One of the hands-on questions I use asks each student to hold a culture tube full of water over writing on index cards. Then instructions tell the student to slowly raise the culture tube Words with all letters symmetrical about an axis through the middle of the line of writing are written in one color. Other words are written in another color. Students should realize that an inverted image is formed of all letters once the culture tube is high enough over the index cards. For one of my demonstration questions, I use four identical bottles with flat rims and fill two with hot water colored yellow and two with cold water colored blue. Then I invert one bottle over another--one pair with cold water on top and one pair with hot water on top. Students should write about the different rates of convection and diffusion and then relate these concepts to densities of hot and cold water..

In Physics 103, students earn 25% of their course grade by writing from half a page to two pages in their journals each class day. My syllabus directions concerning journal writing are the following:

During the last few minutes of each class session (except for group work assessment and exam days), you will write in your insights/confusions journal about your learning. You should record your initial thinking about the phenomena investigated that day, and you should describe changes in your thinking during the class session. Usually a question will be asked by your professor to guide your thinking. You should also write about anything else that seems important to you. You are encouraged to ask your professor questions in your journal....Besides being valuable for assessment, journal writing is a powerful catalyst for thinking. Writing does help clarify and organize one's thinking. Writing can even create ideas that did not exist before the writing began. Completing a journal will give you practice with both inductive and deductive thinking. Also, journal writing will improve your ability to use scientific words appropriately, to focus attention on the most important concepts, and to increase your recall of generalizations. This is a useful rehearsal to improve your performance on essay exam questions. Because being articulate is an asset in nearly all occupations and other activities, journal writing is to be valued for long-term growth, also.

Journal entries are tangible records of concepts that were once amorphous. In this way, journals bring out confusion, aid understanding, and preserve insight.

For journal writing, I usually ask a question about the physical phenomena being studied, for example, "Are temperature and heat the same thing? If not, how are they different?" and "Will a battery run down sooner if it has more or fewer light bulbs connected to it in series? Why?" and "Draw a diagram showing how light bends as it goes through a prism." I sometimes ask self-assessment questions like "How well prepared do you feel for the exam day after tomorrow?" or "What is the most important idea you learned in this course?" A prime advantage of journals is that an instructor can get responses from every student during every class period. Students will write in journals ideas they would never say aloud in class or even tell the instructor face-to-face. The chance to express their thoughts develops the interest students have in the course and makes them more open to new knowledge and skills

Because these journals are a record of attendance, I keep all journals between class sessions. I make a note in a student's journal whenever that student is absent to prevent the student from adding an entry later to get credit for that day. Time saved by not taking attendance offsets the time required for journal writing. I respond to each student's daily entry with a few words of praise or caution next to the relevant section in a student's journal. I might add a note to see me for extra help or a paragraph explaining a science concept. Anxious students are given reassurance and encouragement. Students need both positive and negative comments, but the balance is in favor of the positive ones. This increases students' motivation to participate and to learn.

Requiring students to put their thoughts in writing makes apparent any gaps in their thinking. By reading students' journals, the instructor can detect misconceptions and naive ideas that are held by the students. (Without this kind of feedback, it is difficult for an instructor to imagine what is in the minds of students.) Based on their expressed beliefs and understandings, class activities may be structured to help students move toward more scientifically acceptable ideas.

A student's portfolio determines 15% of her or his grade in Physics 103. On the syllabus, I give these lengthy directions about making a portfolio. This detail is necessary because, for most of my students, this is their first experience with portfolios.

You will collect your best and/or most interesting work in a portfolio. You may include charts, graphs, diagrams, and other items assigned as homework. You may add notes from class or reading. Original and revised exam answers may be put into portfolios. You may do a home project suggested by your professor and then write a description of your procedures and results. Also, you may do a project you design yourself. Show your professor any hand-on apparatus you make, for example, a pinhole camera. You may write an essay. You may report on an entire book, portions of a book, or an article. You may make drawings or take photographs for your portfolio. You may make an audiotape or a videotape, too. You may interview children or adults about physics concepts and then summarize your findings. You may write lesson plans for teaching physics concepts. The recommended reading selections are very helpful for providing suggestions for hands-on activities and for supplying reading materials for reports....Your portfolio should be securely bound with staples, three-hole binders, or other means....Choosing too many similar documents for inclusion into a portfolio does not show ability to discriminate. You should ask yourself, "What additional knowledge, skill, or attitude will I have evidence of by including this piece into my portfolio?" If you cannot supply a concrete answer to this question, then you should omit the document. Your portfolio should not be longer than twenty pages....An essential element of your portfolio is reflection statements. To make a portfolio more than just a scrapbook, each document needs to be an accompanying statement giving the reasons for the selection of this document....You should reflect upon how you produced a document and what knowledge, skills, and attitudes you developed while producing it. You should comment on salient characteristics of the document, aspects that changed as you produced the document, and things you would still like to modify in the document if you had more time. In addition, you need to state what you learned about learning as you produced the document. You should give an appraisal of your own strengths as a learner. Reflection statements should be specific, thorough, accurate, and thoughtful. Support of ideas stated should be made by referring to evidence in the portfolio....Because your reflection statements will determine one-third of your grade for your portfolio, be sure you devote adequate time, effort, and thought to this part of your portfolio....Selecting documents and writing reflection statements are worthwhile activities. You will practice higher-order thinking like analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Self-assessment is a valuable skill throughout one's lifetime, and producing a portfolio should help you develop this skill. Many professionals are required to produce a portfolio or a similar set of materials that document their accomplishments.

The best portfolios portray the student's learning as an adventure, highlight the student's successes along the way. and help the student prioritize her or his efforts on the path ahead.

The Powerful Ideas in Physical Science course has a content goal to help students come to understand and apply conceptual models to explain a wide variety of observable phenomena. In addition, this course has a metacognitive goal to help students become more aware of and take more responsibility for their own thinking at the same time they increase their understanding and appreciation of other people's thinking (AAPT, 1995). One of my students in 1993 phrased this a bit differently in her portfolio completed at the end of the semester.

I began this class somewhat fearful of the subject of science, but the course followed an easy-to-understand pattern of hands-on experiments....I have gained so much more knowledge by working with a group. Involving other people's opinions initiates a thinking process that must take into consideration the various was of perceiving an experiment. The goal of this class was to gain some knowledge about light, electricity, and heat, but the purpose of this class was to develop a thinking process. Both have been achieved. I learned that, by making mistakes in predicting wrong results, I could gain satisfaction by working through the experiment. Emphasis of finding that initially there are no right or wrong answers promotes a comfort in making those predictions. In most classes, wrong answers are an embarrassment. We have been taught to accept wrong answers as part of our learning experience. Wrong answers lead to the need to discover right answers; thus resulting in the need to follow the steps necessary to obtain that right answer. More times than not, have my predictions been wrong. Yet, I never felt stupid.

Constructivist approaches to teaching and cooperative learning techniques can be thought of as having both personal and interpersonal components. The cognitive developmental perspective emphasizes that participants should engage in discussion in which cognitive conflict is resolved and inadequate reasoning is modified. Language passing back and forth between individuals in written and oral forms is viewed as indispensable for the development of understanding (Belenky et al, 1986; Driver, 1995; von Glasersfeld, 1995). The social interdependence perspective has the assumption that the way social interdependence is structured determines how individuals interact. This, in turn, determines what is accomplished by the group (Johnson & Johnson, 1994). The Powerful Ideas in Physical Science course succeeds in reaching its cognitive and metacognitive goals because it is based firmly on both personal and interpersonal components of learning.

American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT). (1995). Powerful ideas in physical science: A model course. College Park, MD: Author.

Belenky, M. F., Clinchy, B. M, Goldberger, N. R., & Tarule, J. M. (1986). Women's ways of knowing: The development of self, voice, and mind. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Driver, R. (1995). Constructivist approaches in science teaching. In L. P. Steffe & J. Gale (Eds.), Constructivism in Education (pp. 385-400). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Driver, R., Asoko, H., Leach, J., Mortimer, E., & Scott, P. (1994). Constructing scientific knowledge in the classroom. Educational Researcher, 23(7), 5-12.

Duit, R. (1995). The constructivist view: A Fashionable and fruitful paradigm for science education research and practice. In L. P. Steffe & J. Gale (Eds.), Constructivism in Education (pp. 271-285). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Dykstra, D. I., Boyle, C. F., & Monarch, I. A. (1992). Studying conceptual change in learning physics. Science Education, 76(6), 615-652.

Fosnot, C. T. (1996). Constructivism: A psychological theory of learning. In C. T. Fosnot (Ed.), Constructivism: Theory, perspectives, and practice (pp. 8-33). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Hewson, P. W. (1996). Teaching for conceptual change. In D. F. Treagust, R. Duit, & B. J. Fraser (Eds.), Improving Teaching and Learning in Science and Mathematics (pp. 131-140). New York, NY: Teachers College Press.

Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1994). Learning together and alone: Cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., & Holubec, E. J. (1987). Structuring cooperative learning: Lesson plans for teachers. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company.

Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., Holubec, E. J., & Roy, P. (1984). Circles of learning: Cooperation in the classroom. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Lewin, P. (1995). The social already inhabits the epistemic: A discussion of Driver; Wood, Cobb, & Yackel; and von Glasersfeld. In L. P. Steffe & J. Gale (Eds.), Constructivism in education (pp. 423-432). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 271-285.

Posner, G. J., Strike, K. A., Hewson, P. W., & Gertzog, W. A. (1982). Accommodation of a scientific conception: Toward a theory of conceptual change. Science Education, 66(2), 211-227.

Rubin, D. (1995). Constructivism, sexual harassment, and presupposition: A (very) loose response to Duit, Saxe, and Spivey. In L. P. Steffe & J. Gale (Eds.), Constructivism in education (pp. 355-366). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Tobin, K., & Tippins. D. (1993). Constructivism as a referent for teaching and learning. In K. Tobin (Ed.), The practice of constructivism in science education (pp. 3-21). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

von Glasersfeld, E. (1995). Radical constructivism: A way of knowing and learning. London: Falmer Press.

von Glasersfeld, E. (1993). Questions and answers about radical constructivism. In K. Tobin (Ed.), The practice of constructivism in science education (pp. 23-38). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

von Glasersfeld, E. (1988). The reluctance to change a way of thinking. The Irish Journal of Psychology, 9(1), 83-90

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