Knowledge Discussion Essay

This past spring, I was giving a presentation on my literature review Conceptual Change Within Physics Education Research in EDCI 810: Foundations of Science Education Research when a question from a colleague sparked a huge “aha” moment for me. To help physics teachers make physics more accessible for students, it’s not just the students’ process of conceptual change that I need to understand, it is also the teachers’. For me to be able to help students with the process of conceptual change, I have to also understand how to support teachers through their own conceptual change process. This “aha” moment allowed me to make connections from what I was studying in my science education research classes with my teacher and teacher education classes.

Before the “aha” moment, I was focused on how students undergo the conceptual change process in order to better understand physics concepts. In researching that literature review, I started with Posner, Strike, Hewson and Gertzog (1982), who laid the foundation for conceptual change in science education, and watched how their Conceptual Change Model (CCM) grew with the research. This model explains the four requirements to achieve conceptual change: dissatisfaction of current conception while finding the new conception intelligible, plausible, and extendable (Posner, Strike, Hewson, & Gertzog, 1982). Dole and Sinatra (1998) then expanded the CCM by adding (a) strength of the existing conception, (b) motivation (dissatisfaction, personal relevance, social context and need for cognition), (c) peripheral cues and (d) engagement as a spectrum when constructing their Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model (CRKM). Now, current research is looking at how different factors such as need for cognition, approach goals, physics motivation, and achievement emotions play into the CRKM (Taasoobshirazi, Heddy, Bailey, & Farley, 2016; Taasoobshirazi & Sinatra, 2011).

This research gave me insight into the complicated process that a student goes through when translating prior experiences into physics conceptual understanding. I was able to look back at my experience as a physics teacher and see how the struggles my students had in understanding physics concepts connected to the conceptual change process. It also allowed me to reflect on how much better my students understood the concepts when I had the resources and support to change my approach to teaching physics and make it a more hands on environment.

As part of my presentation, I also discussed how physics teachers tend to teach physics with the emphasis on problem solving, as opposed to conceptual understanding (Mulhall & Gunstone, 2012). One of my colleagues asked me a question about why physics teachers tend to teach this way and how to get them to transition to teaching conceptually rather than with problem solving strategies. I shared that this is what they know as it is the way they were taught physics. As I answered this question, it clicked in my head that conceptual change of physics teachers’ teaching practices is just as important as the students’ conceptual change process. This is the moment where my science classes and my teacher and teacher education classes came together.

In EDUC 850: The Study of Teaching, I focused my research question on the importance of mentors for physics teachers. For a new physics teacher especially, a mentor helps in their continued learning (Hillier, de Winter, & Twidle, 2013) by giving feedback, building confidence and encouraging the new teachers to take risks in their lessons (Riendeau, 2014). I am interested in continuing to work on the proposal I wrote The Importance of Mentors for Physics Teachers: One Teacher’s Journey from Mentee to Mentor and carrying out the research. In addition, this past semester in EDUC 851: Research on Teacher Education I continued my research interest in mentorship for physics teachers by looking at how having a physics mentor during the first year of teaching help the new teachers’ self-efficacy in my paper The Effect of Mentor Relationships on Physics Teachers’ Self-Efficacy During Their First Year of Teaching.

Now that I started to see the overlap in my classes, I am hoping to be able to use these two strands, of student understanding of physics concepts and physics teacher support, as the lens through which I look while taking my classes. In my head, I see how the ideas of student understanding, teacher pedagogy, and mentor support for teachers are all starting to overlap and similar concepts play into this picture. For example, I have conceptual change as both something that students and teachers need in order to better understand the physics concepts and physics pedagogical knowledge respectively. The graphic below is the start of a visual illustrating how I see the intersections of students, teachers and mentors.

While this is a work in progress, it gives me a place to build and orient myself from in my next few years of classes. The “aha” moment gave me the start of what became my three circles: students, teachers, and mentors. The research that I have done in class to far has helped me place the 11 ideas within the circles. My future classes, research, and experiences will allow me to shift, alter, and add to the circles to create a more clear foundation for helping both students and teachers.

References

Dole, J. A., & Sinatra, G. M. (1998). Reconceptualizing change in the cognitive construction of knowledge. Educational Psychologist, 33, 109-128. doi: 10.1080/00461520.1998.9653294

Hillier, J., de Winter, J., & Twidle, J. (2013). I could enjoy teaching: The case of physics. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 13(3), 287-302. doi: 10.1080/14926156.2013.816392

Mulhall, P. & Gunstone, R. (2012). Views about learning physics held by physics teachers with different approaches to teaching physics. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 23, 429-449. doi: 10.1007/s10972-012-9291-2

Posner, G. J., Strike, K. A., Hewson, P. W., & Gertzog, W. A. (1982). Accommodation of a scientific conception: Toward a theory of conceptual change. Science Education, 66, 211-227.

Riendeau, D. (2014). Why you need a mentor. The Physics Teacher, 52, 444-445. doi: 10.1119/1.4895372

Taasoobshirazi, G., Heddy, B., Bailey, M., & Farley, J. (2016). A multivariable model of conceptual change. Instructional Science, 44, 2, 125-145. doi: 10.1007/s11251-016-9372-2

Taasoobshirazi, G., & Sinatra, G. M. (2011). A structural equation model of conceptual change in physics. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48, 901-918. doi: 10.1002/tea.20434