Education has certainly evolved into the 21st-century, and the way in which physics is taught is not shy to this phenomenon. How is physics taught? What are some problems associated with these teaching methods? How can we fix them?
Students in physics classrooms are often sorted into two groups: those who believe that physics consists of many unrelated concepts and facts, and those who believe that physics is a set of interconnected concepts and ideas (Elby, 2001). These students can be sorted further, based on their attitudes towards learning physics as a whole. Some students think that they will memorize formulas and theories, while others think it is about “relating fundamental concepts to problem-solving techniques” (Elby, 2001). Teaching methods are always changing, and one method under investigation is the hold/withholding answers method.
When you attempt a question in class, does it help or hinder you to be presented with the answer after you have gone through the solution? This topic has been researched in the physics classroom to determine whether or not students should be given either minimal or no guidance. Research shows that students perform better when they are provided some form of guidance (Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark, 2006). In 2018, Zhang found that students perform better when activities are both hands-on and under minimal guidance. Students took tests about concepts in optics in three conditions: hands on and answers provided, hands on and no answers, and no hands on and no answers. Students typically find it more difficult to reason with the material when there are no “objectives” or answers provided and performed better overall with both hands on content and instruction (Figure 1). In particular, Zhang (2018) found that students used less mental resources when they did not spend the entire learning session searching for answers. From this, it is evident that giving students a challenge but also providing them with the correct answers is the most optimal way of educating physics students.
Moving forward, it is clear that asking students to form small groups and discuss the content is a great practice. This is substantiated by Elby’s 2001 study, wherein they highlighted that class discussions help to “diversify” the material. Each student brings their own individual experiences and education to the group, where they can help and guide each other towards solutions. Seeing the correct solution after allows them to determine gaps in their knowledge, thus enabling them to grow as learners (Elby, 2001). Elby (2001) also states that allowing students to correct their own work helps them become more familiarized with the work they produce. Finally, instructors can help students by starting small with concepts to “construct schemas” before teaching more complex subjects in order to “secure their understanding” (Garnett, 2020). Construct schemas are frameworks used to organize knowledge and understand processes, such as rubrics (Atherton and Nutbrown, 2015).
As you move forward with your science education, have you noticed the various teaching methods employed in your lectures? Have they been effective? Questioning these methods and understanding how individuals learn is the key to ensuring that physics and science as a whole is communicated well and in a way that keeps learners engaged.
Works cited
Atherton, F., Nutbrown, C., 2015. Schematic pedagogy: Supporting one child’s learning at home and in a group. International Journal of Early Years Education. 24(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09669760.2015.1119671
Bao, L., Koenig, K., 2019. Physics education research for 21st century learning. Discip Interdscip Sci Educ Res (1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1186/s43031-019-0007-8
Elby, A., 2001. Helping physics students learn how to learn. American Journal of Physics. 69. Available at: 10.1119/1.1377283
Garnett, S. 2020. Cognitive load theory: A handbook for teachers. United Kingdom: Crown House Publishing
Kirschner, P. A.,Sweller, J., Clark, R. E., 2006. Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching. Educational Psychologist 41(2), pp. 75–86. Available at: 10.1207/s15326985ep4102_1
Zhang, L., 2018. Withholding answers during hands-on scientific investigations? Comparing effects on developing students’ scientific knowledge, reasoning, and application. International Journal of Science Education. Available at: 10.1080/09500693.2018.1429692
Comments
11 Responses to “The physics of teaching physics”
Hello iSci!
I decided to write my post about physics pedagogy. It’s a broad topic, but I honed in on one method in particular: the holding/withholding answers method. As iSci students, we have all experienced learning in the physics classroom, so I wanted to investigate a popular teaching method that we have all experienced. This topic is also pertinent to our LUE project this term as we will investigate how to effectively communicate physics concepts to our peers. I am excited to learn about that!
For my post, I am curious about what images I should add. As you read, are there any concepts or statistics that you would like to see an image about? Thank you for all of your feedback 🙂
Best,
Aoife H
Hi Aoife,
I really enjoyed reading your blog post since I’m also interested in pedagogy! I only had a few small suggestions and questions:
1. In terms of images and statistics, I think it might be interesting to briefly mention some other techniques used for teaching physics and potentially include a chart or graph that compares the effectiveness of these techniques to the withholding answers method.
2. Out of curiosity, I was wondering if you knew whether the effectiveness of the strategies mentioned in the “Putting it into practice” section differed for the various types of physics students in “the physics classroom” section earlier.
3. For Anglia Ruskin Harvard style, I believe you can place the year the paper was published after naming the author(s). For instance, in your fifth paragraph, I believe the fifth sentence can be written as “Elby (2001) also states that…”.
Overall, I thought your blog post was really interesting and I hope my suggestions are helpful in your editing! I can’t wait to read the final version!
Best,
Veronica
Hi Veronica!
Thanks for reading my post! I’m glad you enjoyed it. Your suggestions are great. It’s a great idea to include a chart or graph for the comparison of learning techniques. Some of the literature compared/contrasted some of the learning techniques and their efficacy, so I can totally look at including those. I will also fix my citations! About your second question, I don’t know if the methods differed for the different types of students, but I will research that a bit more for sure!
Thank you once again!
Best,
Aoife H
Hi Aoife!
I thought this was a very interesting topic to read—I’ve certainly felt that there have been certain styles of learning/ discussion that have helped with learning and consolidating content in the classroom! Here are some of my suggestions:
– Since our blog posts are quite short, I feel like it may be a better idea to remove the subheadings and rather distinguish each section within the introductory sections of each paragraph, with transitions to ensure your ideas link to one another.
– In the 2018 Zhang study, were there any figures provided illustrating the differences in student performance between the different teaching/ guidance styles? If so, it could be interesting to include so that the readers can visualize how effective the hands-on and minimal guidance method is. That said, in the same section, I think it could be a good idea to elaborate on what is meant by “…students used less mental resources” since it’s a little vague. How was this measured?
– In your second last paragraph, reading about the Elby study reminded me of the Jigsaw Method that’s also been found to be effective in small group discussions! If word count allows, maybe you could choose to incorporate this as well to provide an additional perspective in how different discussion styles can drive efficiency in the classroom.
– In your second last paragraph, I noticed that you used direct quotations quite a few times in your writing. I think it could be good idea to paraphrase, especially since the quotations you used are fairly straightforward and I think it would help smooth out the flow of your paragraph. On that note, it might also be a good idea to briefly describe what “construct schemas” are, since it’s a psychology-specific term and not everyone may be familiar with it!
I hope my comments were useful, looking forward to your final post!
Saebom 🙂
Hi Saebom!
Thank you for your comment! I will absolutely look at providing more context for “students used less mental resources” and “construct schemas”. I haven’t heard of the Jigsaw Method! I’ll look at that for sure and see if word count allows me to touch on it.
Your comments are SUPER helpful, so I appreciate them greatly. Thank you so much!
Best,
Aoife H
Hi Aoife,
This was an interesting blog post topic! It’s definitely cool to see the ways that teaching methods can be improved in order to show the most success in students. Some suggestions I have are
1. While it does separate everything clearly, I’m not sure if subheadings are entirely necessary, due to the fairly short length of our blog posts (though this is more so just a personal comment)
2. I would recommend expanding on perhaps the relevancy of the findings of the study, how they can be applied, perhaps dive deeper into the questions you pose in your introduction too
3. It may also be interesting to discuss how different students can be catered to based on their beliefs, learning styles
4. Specific to you question you asked, I’d like to see a figure about your second paragraph in the “putting it into practice” section, specifically the student growing as learners
Overall good job and good luck with editing!
Emily
Hi Emily!
Thank you for reading my post! I’m glad you enjoyed it. I will remove the subheadings are connect my topics more smoothly – you’re right in that our posts are fairly short. If word count allows, I’ll look at learning styles, though I think a whole separate post could be written on different learning styles! Great idea about finding an mage for the “putting it into practice” section. I’ll do that.
Thank you so much!
Best,
Aoife H
Hello Aoife!
I love that you chose to focus on such an interesting topic that we rarely get to discuss. Pedagogy is so important, especially in the time of LUE, so the timing of this blog post could not be better. I have a couple of small suggestions that I hope will help during your editing process:
1. Your introduction mentions rather abruptly that fewer students are enrolling in STEM, but this statistic is not necessarily connected later in your post. I would consider either revisiting this information in another section to connect it or removing it from your introductory setting entirely.
2. In your paragraph about the physics classroom, you describe a variety of student-types. In the end, you mention that teaching methods are always changing, is this in response to those student types? I would try to clarify the connection between that statement and the rest of the paragraph.
3. I think the reader might benefit from a definition of a construct schema, maybe a figure to demonstrate this idea would be helpful.
Overall, the quality of your post is outstanding and the points you make are very interesting. Thank you for sharing this information in such a digestible and succinct way. I look forward to reading more from you in the future.
Cheers,
Madi
Hi Madi!
Thank you for reading! I’m glad you enjoyed my post. I agree with you in that pedagogy is super important, especially as we dive into LUE. Your suggestions have been super helpful – I will look reworking the introduction to focus on the STEM aspect. Your second question is also really thought-provoking, so I’ll definitely do more research into that! I will define “construct schema” and look into including a diagram!
Thanks again for your feedback!
Best,
Aoife H
Hi Aoife,
This was a really fascinating blog post! I found that so many of the ideas you mentioned really resonate with my experience and how I feel I personally learn the best. I’ve have a few suggestions for you:
I believe that it would be very helpful if you could provide some visuals to help support the audience’s understanding of teaching in physics. Since the large majority of people are visual learners, having data in the form of eithers statistics, graphs, or charts to quantify the effectiveness of these teaching methods that you mentioned would be really helpful.
I also noticed that you may have made a mistake in your citations. I believe that the year, in brackets, is supposed to come immediately after the author’s name if incorporated into a sentence.
Another suggestion I have is that if the word limit and time permits it, you should look into how content delivery can affect learning outcomes. Are traditional lectures with one educator lecturing a hall of students effective? How about the difference between learning physics in person, online synchronously, and asynchronously? (this would be extremely relevant to our current state of education). How can lessons be better structured to help students better understand physics?
Overall, really nice job. I think its really nice that you picked such a relevant topic for us. I look forward to reading your final copy!
– Kavin
Hi Kavin!
Thanks for reading and responding. I’m glad you enjoyed my post. It’s super relevant so I’m glad it hit the mark! Thank you for your lovely suggestions. I will fix the formatting of my citations as well as look into adding a more visual aspect to my post. Finally, I would LOVE to go into delivery and how it affects student learning, so I will see if I can fit it in, word count permitting!
Thank you!
Best,
Aoife H