A case of physics faculty engaging in pedagogical sense-making

Abstract

Faculty often become motivated to try research-based instructional strategies after attending profes-sional development (PD) workshops, but are often underprepared to wisely adapt these strategies both to their local contexts and to specific situations they encounter with their students. We used our workshop observation tool to select a rare session from the Physics and Astronomy New Faculty Workshop where faculty are analyz-ing instruction within a large group open discussion. We analyze video-recordings of this session to understand what it can look like for faculty to learn how to reason about instruction in ways that would support their flexible response to students' reasoning and engagement in the moment. Our analysis identifies features of pedagogical sense-making and considers what might support its emergence in this situation.

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