Browsing by Author "Elby, Andrew"
Now showing 1 - 13 of 13
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Accounting for variability in a teacher’s epistemology: Resources and framing(2018-05-31) Lau, Matty; Elby, AndrewItem Analyzing identity trajectories within the physics community(American Physical Society, 2022-10-12) Quan, Gina M.; Turpen, Chandra; Elby, AndrewWe analyze the identity trajectory of a single case study, Cassidy, within the physics community. We focus our analysis on two settings in the physics community: an undergraduate research experience, and undergraduate coursework. We use video data from three interviews (spanning roughly fifteen months) to longitudinally analyze shifts in participation. We discuss Cassidy’s experience through two constructs: normative identities, Cassidy’s sense of the valued roles within physics, as well as personal identity, who Cassidy is within the physics community and the extent to which she aligns with normative identities. In attending to shifts in the alignment between personal and normative identities, we identify several entry points, or salient events that open up new opportunities for participation.Item Appendix to 2015 PERC submission(2015) Alonzo, Alicia; Elby, AndrewThis document is the electronic appendix for a paper submitted to the Proceedings of the 2015 Physics Education Research Conference, called How Physics Teachers Model Student Thinking and Plan Instructional Responses When Using Learning-Progression-Based Assessment Information.Item Arguing about argument and evidence: Disagreements and ambiguities in science education research and practice(2022) Tang, Xiaowei; Levin, Daniel; Chumbley, Alexander; Elby, AndrewScience education researchers agree about the importance of evidence in science practices such as argumentation. Yet, disagreements and ambiguities about what counts as “evidence” in science classrooms pervade the literature. We argue that these ambiguities and disagreements can be viewed as falling along three fault lines: (i) the source of evidence, specifically, whether it must be first-hand; (ii) whether “evidence” must always be empirical; and (iii) the extent to which evidence is inferred, and what degree of inference transforms “evidence” into something else. In this paper, after showing how these three fault lines manifest in the literature, we argue that these three dimensions of disagreements and ambiguities are not confined to research and research-based curricula; they are also salient in teachers’ classroom practice, as illustrated by a dramatic, multi-day debate between a mentor teacher and her teacher intern. After establishing the salience of the three fault lines in both research and practice, we explore whether NGSS can provide a resolution to the teachers’ debate and to the disagreements/ambiguities in the literature. Our analysis reveals that NGSS reproduces rather than resolves those three fault lines—but in doing so, it invites a resolution of a different type. Instead of providing a single, precise, context-independent definition of “evidence,” NGSS implicitly reflects a defensible view that what counts as “evidence” depends on the epistemic aims of the practices in which the students are engaged. This implied context-dependency of what counts as good evidence use, we argue, could be made explicit in an addendum document clarifying aspects of NGSS. Doing so would provide valuable guidance to teachers, teacher educators, and researchers.Item Connecting self-efficacy and views about the nature of science in undergraduate research experiences(American Physical Society, 2016-11-21) Quan, Gina M.; Elby, AndrewUndergraduate research can support students’ more central participation in physics. We analyze markers of two coupled shifts in participation: changes in students’ views about the nature of science coupled to shifts in self-efficacy toward physics research. Students in the study worked with faculty and graduate student mentors on research projects while also participating in a seminar where they learned about research and reflected on their experiences. In classroom discussions and in clinical interviews, students described gaining more nuanced views about the nature of science, specifically related to who can participate in research and what participation in research looks like. This shift was coupled to gains in self-efficacy toward their ability to contribute to research; they felt like their contributions as novices mattered. We present two case studies of students who experienced coupled shifts in self-efficacy and views about nature-of-science shifts, and a case study of a student for whom we did not see either shift, to illustrate both the existence of the coupling and the different ways it can play out. After making the case that this coupling occurs, we discuss some potential underlying mechanisms. Finally, we use these results to argue for more nuanced interpretations of self-efficacy measurements.Item Mathematical sense-making in quantum mechanics: An initial peek(American Physical Society (APS), 2017-12-28) Dreyfus, Benjamin W.; Elby, Andrew; Gupta, Ayush; Sohr, Erin RonayneMathematical sense-making—looking for coherence between the structure of the mathematical formalism and causal or functional relations in the world—is a core component of physics expertise. Some physics education research studies have explored what mathematical sense-making looks like at the introductory physics level, while some historians and “science studies” have explored how expert physicists engage in it. What is largely missing, with a few exceptions, is theoretical and empirical work at the intermediate level—upper division physics students—especially when they are learning difficult new mathematical formalism. In this paper, we present analysis of a segment of video-recorded discussion between two students grappling with a quantum mechanics question to illustrate what mathematical sensemaking can look like in quantum mechanics. We claim that mathematical sense-making is possible and productive for learning and problem solving in quantum mechanics. Mathematical sense-making in quantum mechanics is continuous in many ways with mathematical sense-making in introductory physics. However, in the context of quantum mechanics, the connections between formalism, intuitive conceptual schema, and the physical world become more compound (nested) and indirect. We illustrate these similarities and differences in part by proposing a new symbolic form, eigenvector eigenvalue, which is composed of multiple primitive symbolic forms.Item Mathematical sense-making in quantum mechanics: An initial peek(American Physical Society, 2017-12-28) Dreyfus, Benjamin W.; Elby, Andrew; Gupta, Ayush; Sohr, Erin RonayneMathematical sense-making—looking for coherence between the structure of the mathematical formalism and causal or functional relations in the world—is a core component of physics expertise. Some physics education research studies have explored what mathematical sense-making looks like at the introductory physics level, while some historians and “science studies” have explored how expert physicists engage in it. What is largely missing, with a few exceptions, is theoretical and empirical work at the intermediate level—upper division physics students—especially when they are learning difficult new mathematical formalism. In this paper, we present analysis of a segment of video-recorded discussion between two students grappling with a quantum mechanics question to illustrate what mathematical sense-making can look like in quantum mechanics. We claim that mathematical sense-making is possible and productive for learning and problem solving in quantum mechanics. Mathematical sense-making in quantum mechanics is continuous in many ways with mathematical sense-making in introductory physics. However, in the context of quantum mechanics, the connections between formalism, intuitive conceptual schema, and the physical world become more compound (nested) and indirect. We illustrate these similarities and differences in part by proposing a new symbolic form, eigenvector eigenvalue, which is composed of multiple primitive symbolic forms.Item Rethinking the division of labor between tutorial writers and instructors with respect to fostering equitable team dynamics(American Physical Society, 2020-12-04) Sabo, Hannah C.; Elby, Andrew[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Curriculum Development: Theory into Design.] This paper proposes the rethinking of the division of labor between physics education research curriculum developers and classroom instructors. Historically, both curriculum developers and instructors have taken responsibility for fostering students’ conceptual development, epistemological development, and other learning goals related to physics content knowledge and practices or process skills. By contrast, responsibility for fostering productive group dynamics has been taken up almost entirely by instructors. Tutorial and lab developers structure their materials to be used in small groups, but have not generally designed, tested, and refined their materials to minimize problematic group dynamics. In this paper, we argue that the written tutorial can and should do more to prevent negative group dynamics from arising. To make this claim plausible, we describe an example from our own experience. While revising a tutorial, we noticed some problematic dynamics emerging; one of the students was unfairly blamed for a simulation-setting mistake and was later left out of a conversation. We came up with hypotheses about factors that might have contributed to those dynamics. A few of those factors, we argue, could be addressed in part through tutorial revision. While acknowledging that instructors will always have more capacity and hence more responsibility than curriculum writers to foster productive group dynamics, we call for tutorial writers, during the testing and revision of their materials, to monitor how the tutorial impacts team dynamics and to be transparent (in publications and presentations) about how they modified the tutorial to address problematic dynamics they observed.Item Rethinking the relationship between instructors and physics education researchers(American Physical Society, 2020-12-04) Elby, Andrew; Yerdelen-Damar, Sevda[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Curriculum Development: Theory into Design.] In the “standard” physics education research curriculum-development model, researchers are cast primarily as producers of curricula and instructors are cast primarily consumers, i.e., adopters and adapters. We illustrate a complementary model in which researchers’ curricular modules, and also their “pure” research unattached to curriculum development, can serve as instructionally generative fodder that inspires and loosely guides instructors in creating their own curricular materials. Drawing on experiences from our graduate student days, we show how particular curricula and research papers influenced our curriculum development and instruction in particular ways. We then argue that the physics education ecosystem could benefit if researchers were more intentional about creating potential instructionally generative fodder, and we suggest ways to do so. Although not intended to replace the standard curriculum-development model, which has a history of producing effective tutorials and other curricular modules, our alternative model casts the researcher and instructor as co-equal contributors to the research-based yet creative process of curriculum generation.Item Sense-making with Inscriptions in Quantum Mechanics(2016) Sohr, Erin Ronayne; Gupta, Ayush; Elby, Andrew; Dreyfus, Benjamin W.; Gupta, AyushThis document provides supporting materials for a paper submitted for review to the Physics Education Research Conference proceedings in July 2016, "Sense-making with Inscriptions in Quantum Mechanics."Item Supplementary Document for IJSE paper titled, "Beyond Epistemological Deficits: Dynamics Explanations of Engineering Students' Difficulties with Mathematical Sensemaking"(2011) Gupta, Ayush; Elby, AndrewThe document serves as supplementary material for the manuscript titled, “Beyond Epistemological Deficits: Dynamic explanations of engineering students’ difficulties with mathematical sense-making,” published in International Journal of Science Education, 2011.Item Supplementary Material: “Because math”: Epistemological stance or defusing social tension in QM?(2015) Sohr, Erin Ronayne; Dreyfus, Benjamin W.; Gupta, Ayush; Elby, Andrew; Gupta, AyushThis document provides supporting materials for a paper submitted for review to the Physics Education Research Conference proceedings in 2015 titled, “‘Because math’: Epistemological stance or defusing social tension in QM?” It includes 3 sections: (1) Introduction, (2) Transcript data, and (3) the Particle in a Box tutorial worksheet relevant to the data.Item Supplementary Materials: Kuo et al., How Students Blend Conceptual and Formal Mathematical Reasoning in Solving Physics Problems, accepted for publication in Science Education on 08/08/2012(2012-08) Kuo, Eric; Hull, Michael M.; Gupta, Ayush; Elby, Andrew; Gupta, AyushThis is supplemental material pertaining to the qualitative data presented in the manuscript: Kuo. E., Hull, M. M., Gupta, A., & Elby, A., How Students Blend Conceptual and Formal Mathematical Reasoning in Solving Physics Problems, accepted for publication in Science Education on 08/08/2012. The following material consists of 4 parts: A. The context of the study (p. 2) B. The question protocol that students were asked to answer. (pp. 3-4) C. The transcript of Alex’s interview (pp. 5-17) D. The transcript of Pat’s interview (pp. 18-31)