Most of the research surrounding development of scientific abilities among introductory physics students has been conducted at the college level. A shift in the high school science culture encouraged by NGSS has changed the focus of K-12 physics education making similar work necessary at the K-12 level This paper describes how high school students in a first-year physics course developed assumptionassociated abilities during the six months they studied mechanics. Using their written laboratory reports, we found that repeated exposure helped students gain competence identifying and evaluating assumptions. While it took high school students longer to demonstrate proficiency than college students, by the end of the mechanics portion of the curriculum, 90-95% of students achieved proficiency or partial proficiency.

This study reports on the long-term effects of learning through the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) approach on high school physics students. Students learning physics through the ISLE approach engage in collaborative activities that mirror the practice of physicists to construct concepts and apply them to solving practical problems. Previous studies of learning in ISLE-based classrooms showed that the students develop abilities to design experiments, collect and represent data, communicate and many others. However, there were no follow up studies that demonstrate what the students remember and how they use those abilities in their future education and professional careers. We administered a survey to alumni who learned physics in an ISLE-based classroom to find out what they remember many years after taking the course as well as if they find their physics learning useful for future education and careers. We report on the findings from this study.

The Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) approach to learning and teaching holds as one of its core tenets that students should learn physics by engaging in the same processes through which physicists develop new knowledge. One key skill necessary for this is hypothetico-deductive reasoning. In this study, we explored how the experience and familiarity of a lab instructor with the ISLE approach impacted students’ development of key scientific abilities related to making and testing hypotheses.

No abstract