Learning Physics in Context: A study of student learning about electricity and magnetism

Finkelstein, Noah D.

doi:10.1080/09500690500069491

Cited by 89 publications

(81 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…In contrast to the classifications mentioned above, Finkelstein (2005) describes hierarchical layers or shells educational contexts are always embedded in. At the core, he puts the task formation, consisting of task (problem), student and concept, whereas all three of these parts are interconnected.…”

Section: Contexts In Science Education-definitions and Differentiationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Authenticity, for example, results from the complexity and the form of representation of a situation and the credibility for the student. In consensus with Finkelstein's (2005) description of task formation, the authors heavily emphasise the affective constitution of contexts to be a joint result of task and student characteristics.…”

Section: Contexts In Science Education-definitions and Differentiationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Albeit most of the presented approaches can be seen as trying to specify the relation between content (or more general: the focal event) and context (the field of action, c.f. Duranti and Goodwin 1992), they differ in the focus of this specification, ranging from the educational function (Gilbert 2006), the classification of different kinds of and the transfer between contexts (Barnett and Ceci 2002) or the inspection of promoting and hindering features of the context regarding students' learning of the content (Finkelstein 2005;van Vorst et al (2014)). Consequently, the definition of context often depends on the research question at issue, making the reception and comparison of different research approaches difficult.…”

Section: Contexts In Science Education-definitions and Differentiationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Referencing to Finkelstein (2005), we restrict ourselves to the task formation (consisting of task, student and concept) since these are the main objects in school settings. We are aware of the influence social, local, temporal or modal contexts can have on the learning process in general, but these are not investigated further here.…”

Section: Contexts In Science Education-empirical Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following Greeno (2009) and Finkelstein (2005), our key argument is that there is no such thing like a learning opportunity without context. Therefore, we intend to shift the discussion towards the question which composition of contexts might be more suitable to acquire knowledge or competence concerning a certain scientific concept in comparison to another context composition.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Composition-Effects of Context-based Learning Opportunities on Students’ Understanding of Energy

Podschuweit

Bernholt

2017

Res Sci Educ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Context-based learning has become a widespread approach in science education. While positive motivational effects of such approaches have been well established empirically, clear results regarding cognitive aspects of students' learning are still missing. In this article, we argue that this circumstance might be mainly rooted in the definition of context itself. Based on this argument, we shift from the issue of if contexts are cognitively beneficial to focus on the question of which composition of contexts is, at least by tendency, more effective than another. Based on theories of conceptual change, we therefore conducted a small-scale intervention study comparing two groups of students learning in different sets of contexts focusing on the same scientific concept-the cross-cutting concept of energy. Results suggest that learning in a more heterogeneous set of contexts eases transfer to new contexts in comparison to learning in a more homogeneous set of contexts. However, a more abstract understanding of the energy concept does not seem to be fostered by either of these approaches. Theoretical as well as practical implications of these finding are discussed.

show abstract

Section: Contexts In Science Education-definitions and Differentiationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Contexts In Science Education-definitions and Differentiationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Contexts In Science Education-definitions and Differentiationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Contexts In Science Education-empirical Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Composition-Effects of Context-based Learning Opportunities on Students’ Understanding of Energy

Podschuweit

Bernholt

2017

Res Sci Educ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Aligning Coordination Class Theory With a New Context: Applying a Theory of Individual Learning to Group Learning

Barth-Cohen

Wittmann

2017

Science Education

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article presents an empirical analysis of conceptual difficulties encountered and ways students made progress in learning at both individual and group levels in a classroom environment in which the students used an embodied modeling activity to make sense of a specific scientific scenario. The theoretical framework, coordination class theory, has primarily been used to capture individual learning in interview settings, and here it is applied to analytically capture both individual and group learning in a complex classroom environment. Classrooms of ninth‐grade earth science students used the position of their bodies to model a specific scientific concept, the steady‐state energy of the earth. The students encountered difficulties aligning their understanding of the scientific concept with the models. Subsequently, they changed their models in specific ways that better aligned their understanding of the scientific concept with their newly modified model. The theory is utilized to describe learning by both individuals and the group in this classroom environment and shows how a single student's contribution can dramatically affect the model and subsequent learning. Implications suggest new ways in which the theory may be useful for designing learning environments.

show abstract

Facilitating change in undergraduate STEM instructional practices: An analytic review of the literature

Henderson¹,

Beach²,

Finkelstein³

2011

J Res Sci Teach

Self Cite

822

853

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article reviews current scholarship about how to promote change in instructional practices used in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses. The review is based on 191 conceptual and empirical journal articles published between 1995 and 2008. Four broad categories of change strategies were developed to capture core differences within this body of literature: disseminating curriculum and pedagogy, developing reflective teachers, enacting policy, and developing shared vision. STEM education researchers largely write about change in terms of disseminating curriculum and pedagogy. Faculty development researchers largely write about change in terms of developing reflective teachers. Higher education researchers largely write about change in terms of enacting policy. New work often does not build on prior empirical or theoretical work. Although most articles claim success of the change strategy studied, evidence presented to support these claims is typically not strong. For example, only 21% of articles that studied implementation of a change strategy were categorized as presenting strong evidence to support claims of success or failure of the strategy. These analyses suggest that the state of change strategies and the study of change strategies are weak, and that research communities that study and enact change are largely isolated from one‐another. In spite of the weak state of the literature, some conclusions related to the design of change strategies can be drawn from this review. Two commonly used change strategies are clearly not effective: developing and testing “best practice” curricular materials and then making these materials available to other faculty and “top‐down” policy‐making meant to influence instructional practices. Effective change strategies: are aligned with or seek to change the beliefs of the individuals involved; involve long‐term interventions, lasting at least one semester; require understanding a college or university as a complex system and designing a strategy that is compatible with this system. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 48: 952–984, 2011

show abstract

Learning Physics in Context: A study of student learning about electricity and magnetism

Abstract: This paper re-centres the discussion of student learning in physics to focus on context.

Cited by 89 publications

References 30 publications

Composition-Effects of Context-based Learning Opportunities on Students’ Understanding of Energy

Composition-Effects of Context-based Learning Opportunities on Students’ Understanding of Energy

Aligning Coordination Class Theory With a New Context: Applying a Theory of Individual Learning to Group Learning

Facilitating change in undergraduate STEM instructional practices: An analytic review of the literature

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About