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Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research
written by Brian W. Frank and Rachel E. Scherr
Research in student knowledge and learning of science has typically focused on explaining conceptual change. Recent research, however, documents the great degree to which student thinking is dynamic and context-sensitive, implicitly calling for explanations not only of change but also of stability. In other words, when a pattern of student reasoning is sustained in specific moments and settings, what mechanisms contribute to sustaining it? We characterize student understanding and behavior in terms of multiple local coherences in that they may be variable yet still exhibit local stabilities. We attribute stability in local conceptual coherences to real-time activities that sustain these coherences. For example, particular conceptual understandings may be stabilized by the linguistic features of a worksheet question or by feedback from the students' spatial arrangement and orientation. We document a group of university students who engage in multiple local conceptual coherences while thinking about motion during a collaborative learning activity. As the students shift their thinking several times, we describe mechanisms that may contribute to local stability of their reasoning and behavior.
Subjects Levels Resource Types
Education - Basic Research
- Behavior
= Social Interaction
- Cognition
= Cognition Development
- Communication
- Learning Theory
- Lower Undergraduate
- Graduate/Professional
- Reference Material
= Research study
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Format:
application/pdf
Access Rights:
Free access
License:
This material is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.
Rights Holder:
American Physical Society
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.8.020101
NSF Numbers:
0440113
0633951
0822342
0962805
PACSs:
01.40.Fk
01.40.Ha
Record Creator:
Metadata instance created August 9, 2012 by Raina Khatri
Record Updated:
February 27, 2013 by Lyle Barbato
Last Update
when Cataloged:
July 13, 2012
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