Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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.
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Item “HOW DO WE MAKE THIS HAPPEN?” TEACHER CHALLENGES AND PRODUCTIVE RESOURCES FOR INTEGRATING ENGINEERING DESIGN INTO HIGH-SCHOOL PHYSICS(2017) Shirey, Katherine Levenick; Elby, Andrew; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Recent attention on social, civil, and environmental problems has caused policy-makers and advisors to advocate for more integrated science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) instruction. Although integrated STEM education promises to prepare U.S. students to tackle the crises of our times and the future (Lander & Gates, 2010), the integration of engineering design into high-school physics may prove difficult for teachers whether or not they’ve been previously trained in engineering design. This dissertation addresses a gap in classroom observation-based research on engineering integration in physics (Dare, Ellis, & Roehrig, 2014) by drawing on rich, qualitative, participant-observation data to investigate engineering-design instruction in high-school physics. The first study explores tensions that three high-school physics teachers encountered as they planned and executed a terminal velocity engineering design challenge. Separating out physics content came into tension with truly integrated engineering-design instruction as envisioned in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013d), time and technical constraints came into tension with adequate data collection for making design decisions, and teachers’ supportive classroom routines came into tension with students’ divergent design thinking and agency. The first study concludes that even highly motivated and supported teachers may experience tensions between their regularly productive instructional practices and engineering design that could threaten the authenticity of the engineering design in which students engage. The second study identifies some of teacher “Leslie’s” productive resources (locally coherent patterns of thoughts and actions) activated as she implemented her first engineering design challenge in physics. Leslie called up some of the same resources when she taught engineering design as when she facilitated open, guided, and structured-inquiry investigations. This study suggests that finding and calling upon resources that are assistive in other instruction, such as inquiry instruction, might be useful for science teachers attempting engineering-design integration. Science education reform implementation researchers, teacher educators, and professional development providers need to acknowledge tensions that teachers may face with engineering-design integration, and the role that teachers’ existing resources can play in supporting reform adoption. Finally, this study agrees with other work (Katehi, Perason, Feder, & Committee on K-12 Engineering Education, 2009) emphasizing the need for more research on engineering-design integration in high-school physics.Item 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.