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if you want to comment on the draft, best to look at the most up-to-date version, which is here:https://www.overleaf.com/read/zbknqjzvvvsg
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I thought I'd take a few days to map out a possible PERC paper. The easier one to write is the one that maps out IC ... but I want that to fit into a longer journal paper. So I thought I'd try to frame a paper that looks at one class day through several lenses... showing how this class instantiates several themes, and doesn't others. After two solid days on this, I'm not sure it really holds together. It's just hard to fit it into four pages.
Below is the first two pages, leaving me < two pages to describe what unfolds in the 90 minutes of class, and how to see that through the various lenses I outlined...
Would love thoughts from anyone who has time!
I. INTRODUCTION
Physics Education Research has made great strides in improving students’ understanding of physics content by operationalizing "understanding" [1], creating curricula that promote gains in understanding [2], and developing common design principles for that curriculum [2]. However, this improved understanding is of little value if students do not draw on their knowledge outside of the classroom. And yet there is little research on whether or not students transfer ideas from physics classes to other settings, or the characteristics of instruction that promote that transfer.
This gap is the rationale behind the study reported here. Specifically, we have been interested in one type of transfer: moments in which students use science concepts to see and experience their "everyday" world in meaningful, new ways– a concept related to Pugh’s [3] construct of "transformative experience" (TE). In other papers we examine the measurement of TE [4, 5]. In this paper we address the question: what aspects of curriculum and instruction support high TE and transfer?
Below, we summarize research on characteristics of instruction that promote or inhibit transfer [6–8]. We then examine how those characteristics are instantiated in a physics classroom that has high TE scores [5]. In particular, we look across one day of instruction and link features of this classroom to hypothesized mechanisms that support transfer. Although we are reporting on a non-traditional course, we anticipate that these findings can lead to design principles to support learning that has relevance beyond the classroom walls.
II. BACKGROUND: LEARNING FOR TRANSFER
Early research on transfer has been conducted with scripted "training" and defined "target" scenarios [9]. In our study, we are interested in learning that takes place in the less-controlled setting of a classroom, and transfer as a choice to notice and use ideas from class in settings where it is not required or even anticipated. Despite the large literature on transfer, studies of this ilk - particularly in science - are few; we briefly summarize four strands of research below.
A. Pugh: teaching for transformative experiences
To teach for transformative experiences, Pugh notes that instructors should "create a context where particular ways of experiencing the world through concepts are displayed and valued and to help students come to participate more centrally in these experiences." (p 1106) To do this, a teacher should "(a) [frame] the content in terms of its experiential value, (b)[scaffold] re-seeing, and (c) [model] transformative experiences."
This approach, then, foregrounds the instructor’s role: noting for students how content has use and value, modeling how to see the world with these concepts, and scaffolding students in seeing the world in new ways. This stands in contrast to approaches described below, which attend to how classroom activity, rather than the content, is framed.
B. Greeno: accountable authors
In his preface to a journal issue on transfer, Greeno [7] hypothesizes that transfer happens, in part, when "...people learn how to act with conceptual agency in substantive domains and in activity settings, and authoritative and accountable positioning in learning environments facilitates that learning...If a student has developed a participatory identity with strong conceptual agency while learning concepts...we could expect that student to be more likely to participate with strong conceptual agency when he or she has an opportunity to use those concepts and methods in another setting."
If a student is to use physics ideas in interpreting the thickness of her reading glasses, that student must not only understand reflection and refraction, but have the conceptual agency to co-opt physics ideas to interpret novel scenarios. This departs from traditional models of transfer (which focus
on the role of content knowledge and the role of similarity between learning and transfer scenarios) to emphasize the importance of agency in using content. This contrasts, too, with Pugh’s approach, which could be interpreted as modeling and rehearsing conceptual agency, but without any explicit attention to constructing ideas as an accountable author as a way of achieving such agency.
C. Engle: expansive framing
Engle[6] also examines how students and content are positioned in a classroom that shows evidence of transfer. Her ideas echo Greeno, with an emphasis on accountable authorship, as well as Pugh, as she highlights that students "expect they will need to continue using what they have learned." In
addition, and drawing on controlled transfer studies that show similarities between "learning" and "transfer" contexts facilitate transfer, she argues that classes that "expansively frame" contexts so that "a larger encompassing context is formed that seamlessly incorporates learning and transfer contexts" will facilitate transfer.
In our discussion of a high-TE class, we will examine what such "expansive framing" looks like for this class and how it may support, or even problematize the idea of, transfer.
D. Engeström: overcoming encapsulation
Finally, we turn to research that examines "encapsulation," the opposite of transfer, where ideas from school are only used in school. Engeström[8] highlights one example: students have difficulty explaining the phases of the moon even after instruction. These misconceptions, he argues, "are not
indications of immature thinking. They are culturally produced artifacts..." In his Activity Theory analysis, he suggests that school activity is such that "the school text is the object of the activity instead of being an instrument for understanding the world." Students learn about the textbook, not the moon.
Engeström argues that to construct classrooms that are not encapsualted, one must shift towards expansive learning, where " learners construct a new object and concept for their collective activity, and implement this new object and concept in practice... Nobody knows exactly what needs to be
learned. The design of the new activity and the acquisition of the knowledge and skills it requires are increasingly intertwined" (Engeström, 1999a).
These implications are reminiscent of Greeno (students should be accountable authors of content) and of Engle (instead of a bounded context/text, there is an open - e.g., expansively framed - ’context of discovery’"). But for Engeström this is relevant not only because it provides students with conceptual
agency and reduces barriers for transfer, but because it will demand that the object of their inquiry is not an object particular to a school-setting, living in a textbook or relevant to Pasco equipment, but discovered by and relevant to students.
III. DATA AND METHODS
We have developed and implemented a survey on transformative experiences[4] and, from those results, identified a course with high TE: Scientific Inquiry. Briefly, this is a course for undergraduate pre-service elementary teachers; we have no textbook, lab manual or typical lab materials, but work in small gropus with everyday materials to model complex phenomena. We have frequent whole-class conversations as we develop consensus models [10]. The class is videotaped, student work is photographed, and the instructor maintains field notes. The course was designed to engage
students in inquiry, not transfer, nor was it based on the principles (described above) that promote transfer and TE.
Because the course shows high TE, we examine this course to see whether and how those principles are instantiated. For this paper, we have transcribed a relatively typical day: students began the course by examining a pinhole camera and constructing models to explain what they saw; they have nascent models for how light enters the pinhole to produce an inverted image. Students have recently questioned how the light reflects off of surfaces so that it enters the pinhole, and several groups have been experimenting to answer that question. The day begins with the instructor (the author) summarizing the class model, the problem that model raised (how light reflects), and current ideas that have been proposed to solve that problem, and then asking for additional ideas.
Below, we trace ideas and activity of the 100-minute class in light of the ideas of TTES, accountable authorship, expansive framing, and overcoming encapsulation.
