Theses and Dissertations from UMD

Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

Browse

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 25

UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMICS OF TEACHER ATTENTION: CASE STUDIES OF HOW HIGH SCHOOL PHYSICS AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE TEACHERS ATTEND TO STUDENT IDEAS
(2010) Lau, Matty; Hammer, David M; Elby, Andrew; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Attending to student ideas is critical for supporting students' science learning (Driver, Guesne, & Tiberghien, 1985; National Research Council, 1996). But, paying attention to student ideas in science class is difficult and does not happen often (Davis, 2001; Feldman, 2002; Levin, 2008; Levitt, 2001; Simmons, et al, 1999). Researchers have looked at how institutional expectations, curricular materials, and a teacher's cognition influence how that teacher picks up on and makes sense of student ideas (Ainley & Luntley, 2007; Levin, 2008; Rop, 2002; Tabak & Reiser, 1999; Wallach & Even, 2005). I argue that we do not yet have adequate ways of characterizing and understanding teachers' attention at the level of the interaction. I have evidence that suggests that when we look in such a fine-grained way, many of our current explanations for what teachers do and pay attention to are not sufficient. The aim of this dissertation is to build on the burgeoning body of work on teacher attention by looking at how to characterize a teacher's attention as that teacher interacts with students in the classroom and studying how a teacher's attention is situated in the teacher's framing of his or her interaction with students. In short, a person's frame or framing of the situation is his or her definition of what is going on in the interaction (Tannen, 1993). I discuss the implications for how we can support teachers' attention to student ideas and some areas for future research motivated by the findings of this study.
Applying Mathematics to Physics and Engineering: Symbolic Forms of the Integral
(2010) Jones, Steven Robert; Campbell, Patricia F; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
A perception exists that physics and engineering students experience difficulty in applying mathematics to physics and engineering coursework. While some curricular projects aim to improve calculus instruction for these students, it is important to specify where calculus curriculum and instructional practice could be enhanced by examining the knowledge and understanding that students do or do not access after instruction. This qualitative study is intended to shed light on students' knowledge about the integral and how that knowledge is applied to physics and engineering. In this study, nine introductory-level physics and engineering students were interviewed about their understanding of the integral. They were interviewed twice, with one interview focused on and described as problems similar to those encountered in a mathematics class and the other focused on and described as problems similar to those found in a physics class. These students provided evidence for several "symbolic forms" that may exist in their cognition. Some of these symbolic forms resembled the typical interpretations of the integral: an area, an addition over several pieces, and an anti-derivative process. However, unique features of the students' interpretations help explain how this knowledge has been compiled. Furthermore, the way in which these symbolic forms were employed throughout the interviews shows a context-dependence on the activation of this knowledge. The symbolic forms related to area and anti-derivatives were more common and productive during the mathematics interview, while less common and less productive during the physics interview. By contrast, the symbolic form relating to an addition over several pieces was productive for both interview sessions, suggesting its general utility in understanding the integral in various contexts. This study suggests that mathematics instruction may need to provide physics and engineering students with more opportunities to understand the integral as an addition over several pieces. Also, it suggests that physics and engineering instruction may need to reiterate the importance, in physics and engineering contexts, of the integral as an addition over several pieces in order to assist students in applying their knowledge about the integral.
FROM INTERACTION TO INTERACTION: EXPLORING SHARED RESOURCES CONSTRUCTED THROUGH AND MEDIATING CLASSROOM SCIENCE LEARNING
(2010) Tang, Xiaowei; Coffey, Janet E; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Recent reform documents and science education literature emphasize the importance of scientific argumentation as a discourse and practice of science that should be supported in school science learning. Much of this literature focuses on the structure of argument, whether for assessing the quality of argument or designing instructional scaffolds. This study challenges the narrowness of this research paradigm and argues for the necessity of examining students' argumentative practices as rooted in the complex, evolving system of the classroom. Employing a sociocultural-historical lens of activity theory (Engestrӧm, 1987, 1999), discourse analysis is employed to explore how a high school biology class continuously builds affordances and constraints for argumentation practices through interactions. The ways in which argumentation occurs, including the nature of teacher and student participation, are influenced by learning goals, classroom norms, teacher-student relationships and epistemological stances constructed through a class' interactive history. Based on such findings, science education should consider promoting classroom scientific argumentation as a long-term process, requiring supportive resources that develop through continuous classroom interactions. Moreover, in order to understand affordances that support disciplinary learning in classroom, we need to look beyond just disciplinary interactions. This work has implications for classroom research on argumentation and teacher education, specifically, the preparation of teachers for secondary science teaching.
Investigating and accounting for physics graduate students' tutorial classroom practice
(2010) Goertzen, Renee Michelle; Scherr, Rachel E; Redish, Edward F; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Physics Education researchers have been working to understanding how students learn physics, which has led to the creation of a body of research-based curricula. It is equally important to study novice instructors, graduate teaching assistants (TAs), who often teach these students. The study of TAs has similarities to how students have been studied: it is important to identify what preconceptions they often enter the classroom with, what resources they may have that they could apply to their physics teaching, and how both the classroom environment and past experiences affect what they are doing in the classroom. Although TAs are responsible for a significant portion of students' instruction at many universities, science TAs and their teaching have not been the focus of any significant amount of study. This dissertation begins to fill this gap by examining physics graduate students who teach discussion sections for introductory courses using tutorials, which are guided worksheets completed by groups of students. While assisting students with their conceptual understanding of physics, TAs are also expected to convey classroom norms of constructing arguments and listening and responding to the reasoning of others. Physics graduate students enter into the role of tutorial TA having relative content expertise but minimal or no pedagogical expertise. This analysis contends that considering the broader influences on TAs can account for TA behavior. Observations from two institutions (University of Colorado, Boulder and University of Maryland, College Park) show that TAs have different valuations (or buy-in) of the tutorials they teach, which have specific, identifiable consequences in the classroom. These differences can be explained by differences in the TAs' different teaching environments. Next, I examine cases of a behavior shared by three TAs, in which they focus on relatively superficial indicators of knowledge. Because the beliefs that underlie their teaching decisions vary, I argue that understanding and addressing the TAs individual beliefs will lead to more effective professional development. Lastly, this analysis advocates a new perspective on TA professional development: one in which TAs' ideas about teaching are taken to be interesting, plausible, and potentially productive.
Influence of Subject Matter Discipline and Science Content Knowledge on National Board Certified Science Teachers' Conceptions, Enactment, and Goals for Inquiry
(2009) Breslyn, Wayne; McGinnis, J. Randy; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The present study investigated differences in the continuing development of National Board Certified Science Teachers' (NBCSTs) conceptions of inquiry across the disciplines of biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics. The central research question of the study was, "How does a NBCST's science discipline (biology, chemistry, earth science, or physics) influence their conceptions, enactment, and goals for inquiry-based teaching and learning?" A mixed methods approach was used that included an analysis of the National Board portfolio entry, Active Scientific Inquiry, for participants (n=48) achieving certification in the 2007 cohort. The portfolio entry provided detailed documentation of teachers' goals and enactment of an inquiry lesson taught in their classroom. Based on the results from portfolio analysis, participant interviews were conducted with science teachers (n=12) from the 2008 NBCST cohort who represented the science disciplines of biology, chemistry, earth science, and physics. The interviews provided a broader range of contexts to explore teachers' conceptions, enactment, and goals of inquiry. Other factors studied were disciplinary differences in NBCSTs' views of the nature of science, the relation between their science content knowledge and use of inquiry, and changes in their conceptions of inquiry as result of the NB certification process. Findings, based on a situated cognitive framework, suggested that differences exist between biology, chemistry, and earth science teachers' conceptions, enactment, and goals for inquiry. Further, individuals teaching in more than one discipline often held different conceptions of inquiry depending on the discipline in which they were teaching. Implications for the research community include being aware of disciplinary differences in studies on inquiry and exercising caution in generalizing findings across disciplines. In addition, teachers who teach in more than one discipline can highlight the contextual and culturally based nature of teachers' conceptions of inquiry. For the education community, disciplinary differences should be considered in the development of curriculum and professional development. An understanding of disciplinary trends can allow for more targeted and relevant representations of inquiry.
COMPARING AND CONTRASTING DIFFERENT METHODS FOR PROBING STUDENT EPISTEMOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT IN INTRODUCTORY PHYSICS
(2009) McCaskey, Timothy Lee; Redish, Edward F; Elby, Andrew R; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
In this dissertation, I perform and compare three different studies of introductory physics students' epistemological views - their views about the nature of knowledge and how it is learned. Physics education research (PER) shows that epistemological views affect how students learn, so they are important to understand and diagnose. The first study uses a Likert-scale instrument, adapted from the Maryland Physics Expectation Survey, designed to assess to what extent students see physics knowledge as coherent (rather than piecemeal), conceptual (rather than just formulas), and constructed (rather than absorbed). Using this survey, I documented several results, including that (i) a large lecture class can produce favorable changes in students' epistemological views, at least in the context of the class, and (ii) teaching a rushed modern physics unit at the end of an introductory sequence can lead to negative epistemological effects. The second study uses the Force Concept Inventory with modified instructions: students indicated both the answer they think a scientist would give and the answer that makes the most sense to them personally. A "split" between these two answers shows that the student does not think she has reconciled her common sense with the formal physics concepts. This study showed that attention to reconciliation in a course allows students to see initially-counterintuitive ideas as making sense. Finally, I did a detailed study of one student by (i) watching video of her in tutorial, where she and three other students answered a structured series of conceptual and quantitative physics questions, (ii) formulating interviews based largely on what I observed in the video, and (iii) interviewing her while the tutorial was still fresh in her head. I repeated this cycle every week for a semester. I found that her tendency to focus on the multiple and ambiguous meanings of words like "force" hampered her ability to reconcile physics concepts with common sense. This last method is time-consuming, but it produces rich data and allows for a fine-grained analysis of individual students. The first two survey methods are best suited for measuring the effect of epistemologically-centered course reforms on large groups of students.
The Dynamics of Variability in Introductory Physics Students' Thinking: Examples from Kinematics
(2009) Frank, Brian Wallace; Scherr, Rachel E; Hammer, David; Physics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Physics education research has long emphasized the need for physics instruction to address students' existing intuitions about the physical world as an integral part of learning physics. Researchers, however, have not reached a consensus-view concerning the nature of this intuitive knowledge or the specific role that it does (or might) play in physics learning. While many early characterizations of student misconceptions cast students' intuitive thinking as largely static, unitary in structure, and counter-productive for the purpose of learning correct physics, much of contemporary research supports a conceptualization of intuitive thought as dynamic, manifold in structure, and generative in the development of expertise. This dissertation contributes to ongoing inquiry into the nature of students' intuitive thought and its role in learning physics through the pursuit of dynamic systems characterizations of student reasoning, with a particular focus on how students settle into and shift among multiple patterns of reasoning about motion. In one thread of this research, simple experimental designs are used to demonstrate how individual students can be predictably biased toward and away from different ways of thinking about the same physical situation when specific parameters of questions posed to students are varied. I qualitatively model students' thinking in terms of the activations and interactions among fine-grained intuitive knowledge and static features of the context. In a second thread of this research, case studies of more dynamic shifts in students' conceptual reasoning are developed from videos of student discussions during collaborative classroom activities. These show multiple local stabilities of students' thinking as well, with evidence of group-level dynamics shifting on the time scale of minutes. This work contributes to existing research paradigms that aim to characterize student thinking in physics education in two important ways: (1) through the use of methods that allow for forms of empirical accountability that connect descriptive models of student thinking to experimental data, and (2) through the theoretical development of explanatory mechanisms that account for patterns in students' reasoning at multiple levels of analysis.
A CASE STUDY OF URBAN STUDENT AND TEACHER EXPERIENCES SURROUNDING AN OUTDOOR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE FIELD TRIP
(2009) Preusch, Peggy Louise; van Zee, Emily H; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Field trips provide opportunities for students to experience many different contexts beyond the classroom, and are a popular choice of K-12 teachers in the US. Recent interest in learning that occurs at informal science education centers such as museums, zoos and aquariums has stimulated studies of the relationship between learning in and outside of schools. Although many studies focus on the teachers, the contexts, and/or the students during the field trip, only a few look at the entire process of learning by including the classroom setting before and after the field trip. This study was designed to develop understandings of the student process of learning during and surrounding an environmental science field trip to an outdoor setting. John Dewey's extensive writings on the relationship between experience and learning informed the analysis, creating a focus on active and passive elements of the experience, continuity within and across contexts, the interactive nature of the experience and the importance of subject matter. An exploration of environmental education (EE), environmental science (ES), and nature study as content revealed the complexities of the subject matter of the field trip that make its presentation problematic. An urban school was chosen to contribute to the research literature about urban student learning in outdoor environments. During the field trip, the students' active engagement with each other and the environment supported meaningful remembrances of the field trip experiences during interviews after the field trip. The students accurately described plants and animals they had observed in different habitats during the field trip. They also made connections with their home life and prior experiences in the outdoors as they discussed the field trip and drew pictures that represented their experiences. One student integrated his outdoor experience with a language arts assignment as he reflected deeply on the field trip. One implication of this study is that educational experiences in outdoor natural environments are complex in ways that contribute to lack of continuity between science lessons in an elementary classroom and environmental science field trip. Long term relationships between schools and informal settings that recognize the strengths of both contexts in terms of student learning processes surrounding field trip experiences are needed to strengthen the educative process for field trip participants.
A case-study of a socio-scientific issues curricular and pedagogical intervention in an undergraduate microbiology course: A focus on informal reasoning
(2009) Schalk, Kelly Anne; McGinnis, James R; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The purpose of this investigation was to measure specific ways a student interest SSI-based curricular and pedagogical affects undergraduates' ability informally reason. The delimited components of informal reasoning measured were undergraduates' Nature of Science conceptualizations and ability to evaluate scientific information. The socio-scientific issues (SSI) theoretical framework used in this case-study has been advocated as a means for improving students' functional scientific literacy. This investigation focused on the laboratory component of an undergraduate microbiology course in spring 2008. There were 26 participants. The instruments used in this study included: 1) Individual and Group research projects, 2) journals, 3) laboratory write-ups, 4) a laboratory quiz, 5) anonymous evaluations, and 6) a pre/post article exercise. All instruments yielded qualitative data, which were coded using the qualitative software NVivo7. Data analyses were subjected to instrumental triangulation, inter-rater reliability, and member-checking. It was determined that undergraduates' epistemological knowledge of scientific discovery, processes, and justification matured in response to the intervention. Specifically, students realized: 1) differences between facts, theories, and opinions; 2) testable questions are not definitively proven; 3) there is no stepwise scientific process; and 4) lack of data weakens a claim. It was determined that this knowledge influenced participants' beliefs and ability to informally reason. For instance, students exhibited more critical evaluations of scientific information. It was also found that undergraduates' prior opinions had changed over the semester. Further, the student interest aspect of this framework engaged learners by offering participants several opportunities to influentially examine microbiology issues that affected their life. The investigation provided empirically based insights into the ways undergraduates' interest and functional scientific literacy can be promoted. The investigation advanced what was known about using SSI-based frameworks to the post-secondary learner context. Outstanding questions remain for investigation. For example, is this type of student interest SSI-based intervention broadly applicable (i.e, in other science disciplines and grade levels)? And, what challenges would teachers in diverse contexts encounter when implementing a SSI-based theoretical framework?
Epistemological Authenticity in Science Classrooms
(2008-11-20) Hutchison, Paul; Hammer, David; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
A scientifically literate individual understands important characteristics of both the nature of scientific knowledge and the activity that produces it, scientific inquiry. (NRC, 1996; AAAS, 1993) In support of these goals the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996) envisions science classrooms where students engage productively in activity that is similar to scientific inquiry. It is presumed that by engaging in this kind of activity students will come to deeper understandings of scientific inquiry and scientific knowledge. For this instructional approach to be successful it is necessary students not only engaging in activity that "looks" like science in important ways, but also view their own activity as authentically using knowledge for the purpose of making sense of natural phenomena. Notably the determination of what is authentic is problematic in a science classroom. There are two different possible arbiters "present" in a classroom, the students themselves and the discipline of science. And what is authentic to one might not be to the other. This work provides perspectives on classroom and teacher professional development implications of this view of science instruction. Chapter two articulates a conceptualization, epistemological authenticity, of the nature of student activity necessary to achieve these instructional goals. Such activity involves students engaging in scientific practices with the same purposes as scientists. Chapter three uses a case study of a science classroom to illustrate some of the features of student activity that provide evidence of more and less productive student expectations about the purposes of their own participation in a science class. It also discusses the role teacher instructional choices play in influencing how students perceive the purposes of classroom activity. Chapter four considers teacher professional development, specifically images of exemplary science classrooms in the Standards and a supplement to it (NRC, 2000). The depictions in those documents provide little insight into student activity, instead focusing on the pre-planned instructional sequence. This is poor preparation for teachers who must pay close attention to students. An alternative depiction is presented and contrasted with the images in the supplement to the Standards.

Theses and Dissertations from UMD

Browse

Filters

Settings

Sort By

Results per page

Search Results