Conference proceeding
Students' varying responses to instructor prompts for frame shifts in physics labs
2022 PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCH CONFERENCE (PERC), pp 451-456
01 Jan 2022
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Research has shown that students in inquiry-based physics labs often expect their experiment to verify a known theory or model, contrary to the goals of the lab. It is important, therefore, to identify ways for instructors to shift students' expectations or epistemic frames to those in line with scientific inquiry. In this paper, we analyze video recordings of one inquiry-based lab session in which the instructor intentionally encourages students to falsify, or disprove, the claim under investigation. We find that students operationalize the instructor's prompt by taking up one of two distinct epistemic frames: open outcome and verification. Students in the open outcome frame initially expect to falsify their claim, but form other conclusions in the face of alternative evidence. Students in the verification frame, however, view falsification as verifying that a claim is false and do not consider other possible outcomes even when they find conflicting data. These results suggest that students may interpret instructor prompts for frame shifts in very different ways. We argue that to shift students to epistemic frames in line with scientific inquiry (e.g., the open outcome frame), instructor prompts should explicitly address uncertainty in outcomes (regarding an experimental result as unknown) and epistemic agency (perceiving oneself as a producer of knowledge).
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Details
- Title
- Students' varying responses to instructor prompts for frame shifts in physics labs
- Creators
- Meagan Sundstrom - Cornell UniversityRebeckah Fussell - Cornell UniversityRachel E. Scherr - University of Washington BothellN. G. Holmes - Cornell University
- Contributors
- B W Frank (Editor)D Jones (Editor)Q Ryan (Editor)
- Publication Details
- 2022 PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCH CONFERENCE (PERC), pp 451-456
- Series
- Physics Education Research Conference
- Publisher
- Amer Assoc Physics Teachers
- Number of pages
- 6
- Grant note
- DGE-2139899 / NSF GRFP Grant; National Science Foundation (NSF); NSF - Office of the Director (OD) DUE-2000739 / NSF; National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Resource Type
- Conference proceeding
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Physics
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000894574300072
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85140486319
- Other Identifier
- 991022032066704721
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InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Education & Educational Research
- Education, Scientific Disciplines
- Physics, Multidisciplinary