Cognitive Studies in Physics (and Astronomy)

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Cognitive Studies in Physics (and Astronomy)

• Do in-class questions help students learning?

Addie Dove Dong Han
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Outline

• Cognitive Study
• Background information
• Why cognitive studies in physics?
• What do cognitive studies focus on?
• Our Purpose
• Our Method
• Our Conclusions

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Background information

• Research into the process of human cognition
  started in the 1950s
• Focuses on how people understand and learn
• Contradictory to behavior research, which focuses
  on the students errors in understanding during
  teaching

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Why Cognitive Studies in Physics?

• Recently, more concentration on the content of
  physics, not on students
• Fail to make an impact on the way a majority of
  our students think about the world
• Some physicists have begun to perform experiments
  on how students are thinking about the world, but
  not in a framework

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What do cognitive studies focus on?

• 1. Building Patterns
• Principle 1 People tend to organize their
  experiences and observations into patterns or
  mental models
• You cannot teach anybody anything. All you can
  do as a teacher is to make it easier for your
  students to learn.
• 2. Building on a mental model
• Principle 2 It is reasonably easy to learn
  something that matches or extends an existing
  mental model.
• Changing an existing mental model
• Principle 3 It is very difficult to change an
  established mental model substantially.

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• 4. The Individuality Principle
• Principle 4 Since each individual constructs
  his or her own mental ecology, different students
  have different mental models for physical
  phenomenon and different mental models for
  learning.
• In other words
• Teachers important task --- Find their
  students problems, and help them by asking
  questions

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Our Purpose

• Inspired by the theory of cognitive studies, we
  would like to investigate
• how well the questions asked by instructors help
  students form correct concepts
• what kind of questions are most helpful to
  students according to Bloom Taxonomy

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Method

• Class observation
• Notes on questions asked of students
• Assessment of questions based on Blooms Taxonomy
• Anonymous student survey
• Observed 4 classes
• 3 intro classes, 1 for physics majors

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Question 1
Do you think the questions asked by the
instructor are useful?

1. Yes, very helpful
2. A little bit
3. No, not at all

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Question 2
Do you think the answers to some questions are
contradictory to your common sense or previous
experiences?

• Yes
• No
• I dont have previous
• experience with
• most of the subjects

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Question 3
Do you think that learning the answers changed
your former ideas totally, or do you think
youll still hold onto your old ideas?

• Yes, however, it is meaningful
• to form the right concept.
• b) Yes, I just accept them conditionally.
• c) No, it doesnt make any sense to me.
• I have confidence mine is right.

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Question 4
Do you have a better way to help yourself form
the correct concept if you CANNOT easily accept
the new ideas?

• Yes, I have.
• No, I havent.
• I am trying to
• figure it out.

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Class 1
N61
7 questions 1 knowledge 6 comprehension
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Class 2
N100
6 questions 2 knowledge 4 comprehension
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Class 4
N37
5 questions 1 knowledge 3
comprehension 1 application
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Class 3
N27
upper level
17 questions 5 knowledge 9
comprehension 3 application
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Our Conclusions

• During an Astronomy class, especially for an
  introductory-level class, teachers questions are
  helpful to students
• These questions are mainly Comprehension
  questions, according to Blooms Taxonomy
• Different students have different backgrounds,
  and so will also use their own methods to figure
  it out.

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Comments

• Class size makes a difference
• Teacher makes a difference - types of questions
  asked, how theyre asked
• Comprehension questions were asked the most
  often, but are they really the best?
• Only a few survey questions were asked of
  students, so limited information was gathered
  (not an in-depth study)
• Solutions?
• Study several large, intro classes in more depth
• Observe one teacher at different levels of
  classes

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The End