Counter-spaces, Transitions, and Hands-on Quantum Projects
If you're concerned with how underrepresented students navigate the culture of a STEM major, this new paper in JRST by a team from TERC is essential reading. It focuses specifically on the counter-spaces occupied by women of color in American universities. Relatedly, this week APS published guidelines for recruiting and retaining women in physics at the university level.
The above graphs show the percent of class-time given to lecturing in middle school, high school, introductory, and higher-level university courses. Which do you think is accurate? According to a fascinating study by a group based at the University of Maine, school teachers tend toward A and D, while university instructors tend toward B and D. In fact, B is the closest to reality. The size of the gap, along with the misperceptions of educators, suggests that we need to better address the transitions our students are experiencing.
This interesting paper by Young and Heckler finds a hierarchy in students' learning about period, frequency, and angular frequency. It's a careful study, relevant to both high school and university courses, and I like the focus on mastery learning.
A paper by Barnes and Brownell in Science Education talks to biology instructors who teach evolution at Christian universities in the USA. It's a good read if you're interested in cross-cultural science education.
This paper by a Croatian team who built a very cool (~$300) muon detector reminds me of the fantastic book by David and Shanni Prutchi, Exploring Quantum Physics through Hands-on Projects. With a small budget, your student team could assemble any of a surprisingly large number of excellent modern physics experiments.
This twitter discussion by Ben Rogers, Frank Noschese, and Brian Frank about bar charts is a good reminder of the power of this visual representation for conservation laws.
On the web:
Dan Burns' students investigate moment of inertia on an inclined table.
Tom Wong uses Audacity for this interference activity.
Brian Frank's students are learning about period and amplitude.
Pivot Interactives has synchronized 3 forms of harmonic motion.
The above graphs show the percent of class-time given to lecturing in middle school, high school, introductory, and higher-level university courses. Which do you think is accurate? According to a fascinating study by a group based at the University of Maine, school teachers tend toward A and D, while university instructors tend toward B and D. In fact, B is the closest to reality. The size of the gap, along with the misperceptions of educators, suggests that we need to better address the transitions our students are experiencing.
This interesting paper by Young and Heckler finds a hierarchy in students' learning about period, frequency, and angular frequency. It's a careful study, relevant to both high school and university courses, and I like the focus on mastery learning.
A paper by Barnes and Brownell in Science Education talks to biology instructors who teach evolution at Christian universities in the USA. It's a good read if you're interested in cross-cultural science education.
This paper by a Croatian team who built a very cool (~$300) muon detector reminds me of the fantastic book by David and Shanni Prutchi, Exploring Quantum Physics through Hands-on Projects. With a small budget, your student team could assemble any of a surprisingly large number of excellent modern physics experiments.
This twitter discussion by Ben Rogers, Frank Noschese, and Brian Frank about bar charts is a good reminder of the power of this visual representation for conservation laws.
On the web:
Dan Burns' students investigate moment of inertia on an inclined table.
Tom Wong uses Audacity for this interference activity.
Brian Frank's students are learning about period and amplitude.
Pivot Interactives has synchronized 3 forms of harmonic motion.