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(KC) PER: Student and Instructor Support & Professional Development, Program and Institutional Change III
7/13/2022 | 12:40 PM to 1:40 PM
Room: CC: Grand Gallery B
Moderator: / Co-Organizer:
Session Code: KC | Submitting Committee: Committee on Research in Physics Education / Co-Sponsoring Committee:
KC01 (12:40 to 12:50 PM) | Contributed | Identifying Learning Assistants’ Resources for Student-Centered Teaching
Presenting Author: Anne Alesandrini, University of Washington
Additional Author | Rachel E Scherr, University of Washington
Additional Author | Lisa M Goodhew, Seattle Pacific University
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The practice of eliciting, valuing, and building on student ideas is central to several research-based teaching strategies, including responsive teaching and resource-oriented instruction. Attending to student thinking and using student ideas as instructional assets can be a challenge for novice instructors, and so we investigate the ideas from which these practices are built in order to better support novice instructors’ growth as teachers. Here, we apply a conceptual resources framework to identify Learning Assistants’ (LAs’) resources for student-centered instruction. We identify productive ideas about teaching that are voiced by multiple LAs and reoccur in the LA pedagogy courses at two universities. This talk will present examples of LAs’ resources for teaching that may be elicited, promoted and built upon to support LAs in enacting student-centered practices, ultimately improving physics instruction for the students they teach.
Supported in part by NSF DUE-1914572
KC02 (12:50 to 1:00 PM) | Contributed | A Paradigm of Repair for Group Work in Introductory Labs
Presenting Author: Katie Ansell, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
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As educators, we value students’ ability to work in groups and often ask them to do so in class. Students desire “good” group dynamics, yet various factors can lead to disappointing outcomes, including inequitable distribution of labor or the exclusion of minoritized students. Teaching staff, particularly novice Teaching Assistants (TAs), may not notice group dynamic issues, nor have they been trained to prevent or resolve them. In this talk, I will propose a view of conflict as a natural part of working in groups, and therefore something we can equip our students and teaching teams to navigate and repair. This talk will provide examples of recent classroom interventions with students and instructional staff under this social-emotional paradigm in a large-enrollment introductory laboratory setting. Results from early iterations of these interventions will be presented along with our next steps in this work.
KC03 (1:00 to 1:10 PM) | Contributed | Identifying Epistemic Frames in Faculty Discourse Centered around Ethics
Presenting Author: Bill Bridges, Kansas State University
Additional Author | Tyler Garcia, Kansas State University
Additional Author | Caleb Linville, Kansas State University
Additional Author | Wyatt Jones, Kansas State University
Additional Author | Caitlin Solis, Kansas State University
Scientists are encouraged to engage in some form of ethical training. A common criticism of these training modules is that they are not effective. We formed a fellowship of fifteen scientists to investigate different modes of engagement with value-laden topics to see how scientists would engage in more ethically-driven discussions. These scientists met for a series of group sessions over the course of an academic year. We examined these discussions through the lens of epistemic frames, and characterize these frames through a number of characteristics including behaviors, verbal cues, and epistemic forms. We use these characteristics to identify the frames present in the fellowship, and what factors influenced changes in frames. Categorizing discussions with epistemic frames offers an opportunity for identifying what is driving more ethically-minded discussions, and this knowledge could then be used to better design ethical training modules.
KC04 (1:10 to 1:20 PM) | Contributed | Student Perspectives of Mini-Studio GTAs’ Roles in Resolving Group Challenges
Presenting Author: Constance Doty, University of Central Florida
Additional Author | Tong Wan, Westminster College
Additional Author | Ashley A Geraets, University of Central Florida
Additional Author | Erin K H Saitta, University of Central Florida
Additional Author | Jacquelyn J Chini, University of Central Florida
The use of groupwork in physics tutorial and lab sections presents opportunities for students to learn from each other as they make sense of physics and develop critical thinking skills. However, the same opportunities might leave students vulnerable to their ideas being negatively judged by their peers, creating a negative learning experience. GTAs who lead such courses might use strategies to help students resolve their group dynamic challenges to mitigate negative social interactions. In this study, we analyze interviews with fourteen students who were enrolled in Physics I/II mini-studio sections (combined tutorial and lab) to investigate group dynamic challenges they experienced and their GTA’s actions to resolve those challenges. Then, we explore a potential relationship between students’ perceptions of their GTA as an instructor or mentor with their evaluation of the GTA’s success with helping to resolve their group dynamic challenges. Finally, we discuss implications for GTA professional development.
KC05 (1:20 to 1:30 PM) | Contributed | The Effect of Value-Focused Discussions on Scientists' Ethical Decision Making
Presenting Author: Tyler Garcia,
Additional Author | Bill Bridges,
Additional Author | Caleb Linville,
Additional Author | Caitlin Solis,
Additional Author | Wyatt Jones,
Current ethics training shows little improvement in ethical decision making. Recent studies have shown that values play a much bigger role in science than what is normally accepted. We believe that by having discussions about the values found in decisions in science, we can improve scientists’ ethical decision making. We are measuring better ethical decision making by seeing how scientists’ awareness of ethical values and level of moral reasoning changed. We formed a fellowship of fifteen science faculty where they discussed the values embedded in various scientific norms to bring awareness to the values inherent in research practices. In order to see how the fellowship impacted the scientists' ethical reasoning, we conducted pre/post interviews where we asked “what would you do” in different ethical vignettes. We determined that scientists’ identified more values and we are still looking at their ethical reasoning.
Scott Tanona, Jonathan Herington, James T. Laverty: Additional Authors
(KC) PER: Student and Instructor Support & Professional Development, Program and Institutional Change III
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