Time

Real learning takes time. Students need opportunities and time to grapple with abstract ideas. Recursion allows students to assimilate concepts as they reencounter them in new and increasingly rich contexts.  

(SOCS-I: Arons, Arnold Teaching Introductory Physics)

What is Physics?

It's a warm summer's evening... (Big Bang Theory reference anyone?)

Students’ enter class with preconceptions of physical concepts as well as predetermined ideas of what physics (or learning in general) entails. Left unaddressed, the latter is as much an impediment to learning as content preconceptions. 

(SOCS- I: Hammer, Mestre)

To students, physics is a collection of formulas (handed down from on high) to be memorized/manipulated. Unfortunately our textbooks and traditional teaching methods can serve to reinforce this. As a result students develop ineffective problem solving strategies that center on finding the right equation rather than invoking experience-based intuition or some underlying conceptual understanding. 

Capturing the Fleeting Instant

A comprehensive understanding of motion is predicated on understanding the concepts of instantaneous position and clock reading. Without these, we cannot develop concepts of average velocity, instantaneous velocity, or acceleration.

(SOCS-C : Arons, Arnold. Teaching Introductory Physics)

Making Learning Contextual

SOCS-C

Guiding students to articulate operational definitions for concepts such as area and volume elevates student thinking beyond memorization and formula manipulation and opens the door to the arithmetical and ratio reasoning.

(Arons, Arnold. Teaching Introductory Physics)

SOCS-P

Students must be provided concrete experiences upon which they can develop operational definitions. They need a context in which to learn the content and in order for long term learning to occur, our goal as instructors should be to make learning contextual.

(Arons, Arnold. Teaching Introductory Physics)

FCI 2.0

While I am familiar with the FCI, every time I take it I am struck by the difficulty of the assessment despite the absence of any calculations. As I was going through the test, I was focusing on the incorrect responses and trying to think like a student that would choose one of those responses (not an easy task).

In doing this I think I understand a little better why the test is such a good challenge - for each answer choice there is a logical argument that could be made or an experience students could recall that would lead them to an incorrect response.

It seems a number of the incorrect answers are historical misconceptions - once held and (logically defended) by some great thinkers in physics (see Aristotelian ideas such as object memory and the natural state of objects).

I would think students rely as much (if not more) on personal experience as they do on logic in answering these questions. When students make a sharp turn in a car - what do they experience? They slide to the outside. When students let go of a spinning merry-go-round, what do they see? The merry-go-round gets further away. With this experience, some of the incorrect responses begin to make a lot of sense.

To me, this highlights that it is a delicate task to correct such misconceptions as they can be deep rooted in experience and/or the product of students really having spent some time thinking about what they have observed.

Learning about Teaching

I just arrived at an AP Physics conference and will be starting the Physics Modeling workshop all in one week. I'm so excited to learn and get better at this thing. @n3lfp.blogspot.com