Spring 2009 Science Teaching Center Seminar
January 26: Luke Conlin -- The Causal Semantics of Physics
February 9: Open
February 23: Andy Elby -- Does Mr. H have coherent, robust beliefs about how his students learn?
March 9: Jason Yip -- Connected Chemistry
March 23: Open
April 6: Colleen Gillespie and Jen Richards -- Understanding How and When Novice Teachers Attend to Student Thinking
April 20: TIffany-Rose Sikorski -- Situating coherence-seeking within a learning progression for scientific inquiry
May 4: Luke Conlin -- Fantasy, Play, and Humor in Scientific Inquiry
May 26: Leema Kuhn Berland
--> back to Fall '09 Seminar
Abstracts
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Luke Conlin -- The Causal Semantics of Physics
January 26, 2009
Many physicists, philosophers, and educators hold the view that science is in large part about finding causal mechanisms. Many educational researchers and practitioners therefore consider student beliefs that contrast with this stance to be epistemologically naive. However, there is a significant portion of experts in these same fields who reject the notion that science is about finding causal mechanisms, often relying on a stance that physics is only about finding and using the right equations. John Norton, for instance, has said that in order for causation to play a central role in physics it must place factual restrictions on our theories--but no such restrictions are forthcoming. In this seminar, I will present an argument in support of the central role of causal mechanisms in physics, by showing how causal notions place factual restrictions on physics theorizing via the semantics of physics equations.
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Andy Elby -- Does Mr. H have coherent, robust beliefs about how his students learn?
February 23, 2009
Members of this group have argued that students' epistemologies - their views about the nature of knowledge and learning - do not take the form of globally coherent beliefs, but instead consist of locally coherent stances triggered and stabilized in large part by contextual factors (Hammer, Elby, Scherr, & Redish, 1995). For instance, a college student named "Louis" approached his physics class as a matter of memorizing disconnected bits of knowledge, but approached his tutoring experiences as helping students build upon their own ideas to make sense of the material. A professional teacher's full-time job, by contrast, is to facilitate students' learning. Therefore, a professional teacher - perhaps unlike his students - might be expected to have fully formed, globally coherent beliefs about how their students learn. And indeed, most research on teachers characterizes their epistemologies as consisting of beliefs. In this talk, drawing on classroom video of a 9th grade physics class and on Matty Lau's interviews with the teacher, I argue as strongly as I can that the teacher has coherent, robust epistemological beliefs about his students' learning. I then discuss whether this case study challenges or supports the modeling of teachers' epistemologies in terms of beliefs.
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Jason Yip -- Connected Chemistry
March 9, 2009
The purpose of my talk is to describe a novel curriculum, titled Connected
Chemistry (CC), and its impact on students’ understanding of chemistry. CC
implements the use of interactive modeling simulations to help students
visualize how macroscopic level phenomena are the result of the interactions of
molecules on the submicroscopic level. CC provides students with the
opportunity to observe, explore, predict and investigate these interactions within
a simulated environment that affords connections between classroom
discussions and observed laboratory phenomena. During this talk I will describe
the motivating factors behind the design of CC and how the curriculum is
structured. There will also be an opportunity for members of the group to
participate in a CC simulation activity, as well as see samples of student work
and videos of a CC enactment. Finally, I will outline the future research goals
and assessment of CC.
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Colleen Gillespie and Jen Richards -- Understanding How and When Novice Teachers Attend to Student Thinking
April 6, 2009
In our presentation, we offer a case study of one novice science teacher in order
to explore how and when novice teachers attend to student thinking. We focus
primarily on two classroom observations and subsequent interviews with the
novice teacher, Alex, in which we see stark differences in how (and even if) Alex
attends to his own students' ideas and reasoning in the classroom. Drawing on
the theoretical framework of "framing," we consider the different ways in which
Alex may be framing the kinds of activities in which he is engaged, and we
propose that his framing may influence how and when he attends to student
thinking in his teaching.
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TIffany Sikorski -- Situating coherence-seeking within a learning progression for scientific inquiry
April 20, 2009
A learning progression for inquiry describes the increasingly sophisticated
scientific practices that students may engage in as they pursue coherent,
mechanistic accounts of phenomena. Drawing on data from one elementary
classroom, I describe coherence-seeking as an example of a scientific practice. I
then situate the practice of coherence-seeking within a learning progression for
inquiry using the theoretical framework of resources and framing.
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Luke Conlin -- Fantasy, Play, and Humor in Scientific Inquiry
May 4, 2009
Inquiry in science involves both generative and reductive aspects. There must be
space for ideas to be generated, introduced, and developed. Alternately, ideas
must be challenged, critiqued, and selected. How do students navigate this
sensitive balance when doing inquiry in the science classroom? I suggest they
often do so using fantasy, play, and humor to do so. In this talk, I will discuss
theories of play and humor that speak to the epistemological roles they can take
on. I will also show video clips of students using fantasy, play, and humor in ways
that contribute to the generative and reductive aspects of scientific inquiry. Then I
will conclude by naming all 50 state capitals in less than 2 seconds.
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Leema Kuhn Berland
May 26, 2009
This talk is about a lively debate among 6th grade students about what an invasive species eats, based on a graph of the populations of wolves, rabbits, grass, and the IS. In a sentence, the students and teacher spend 30 minutes focused on student ideas, with lots of good beginnings of evidence-based argumentation. Then in the final 10 minutes the teacher tries to "take over" and explain the answer, but some of the students won't have it.
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