2014/07/10 by S. F. Wolf, Steven F. Wolf, Wolf, Steven F. +8
Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Educational Strategies and Epistemologies #Innovative Teaching and Learning Methods #Science Education and Pedagogy #physics.ed-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1407.2927
4 pages, 1 figure, accepted in the 2014 PERC proceedings
arxiv created 2014/12/17 · arxiv updated 2014/12/18
A goal of PER is to understand how students use math in physics contexts. To investigate how students use math, we need to identify transitions between conceptual sense-making about physical systems and using mathematics to describe and to make predictions about those systems. We reviewed video of students solving a variety of physics problems in small groups through the lens of epistemic frames (e-frames). In this paper, we present a new e-frame, which we are calling "Just Math", that is similar to the Worksheet e-frame, but is characterized by brief, low-level, math-focused utterances between students. Future work will focus on analyzing the transitions into and out of this e-frame so that we may develop a more coherent understanding of students' use of math in physics.