NSF Award
2420978
Current physics teaching focuses on content and practicing well-defined procedures, a focus which may leave students ill-prepared to solve problems for which there is no known solution. Similarly, physics instructors, though expert scientists themselves, aren’t trained in how to support students in learning these real-world problem-solving processes. This project will serve the national interest by addressing a critical gap in our understanding of how to effectively teach physics students how to solve the real-world problems. In the process of conducting this project, the principal investigator and a graduate student researcher will also build capacity in qualitative physics education research, particularly longitudinal case-study methodologies. The project will simultaneously investigate how students’ problem-solving skills develop across undergraduate and graduate physics education and how instructors’ knowledge of how to teach problem-solving develops during their careers. The work is expected to provide a better understanding of how to teach problem-solving more effectively, thus preparing the next generation of physicists for solving the grand challenges that will face the world in the future. <br/><br/>This project, housed at Auburn University, will use longitudinal, case-based qualitative methods to understand how students’ problem-solving-skills develop over time. It will also examine how students’ and instructors’ epistemologies regarding problem-solving develop and interact with the construction of content knowledge. This project is rooted in empirical theories of scientific problem-solving as decision-making with limited information, as well as activity theory, which emphasizes the context-dependence of knowledge and knowledge construction. This project will utilize videos of students solving real-world problems both in the classroom and in the laboratory setting, as well as simulated recall interviews with the students and instructors. The project team will track a cohort of students and instructors over a period of three years to understand the longitudinal development of the students’ knowledge and epistemologies, and the instructors’ pedagogical knowledge and epistemologies. This proposal will contribute to the understanding of the novice-expert transition in problem-solving, which is an open and fundamental problem in physics education. This will lay the foundation for theory-building through more extensive experiments and the development of educational interventions in physics. Future work will extend this framework across disciplinary boundaries and investigate additional contextual factors that affect the development of problem-solving expertise. The results of this work are also expected aid the development of faculty training programs in physics. The results of this study will be disseminated through scholarly publication and conference presentations. The project is supported by NSF’s EDU Core Research Building Capacity in STEM Education Research (ECR: BCSER) program, which is designed to build investigators’ capacity to carry out high-quality STEM education research.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
