How to do Physics Education Research
Joseph L. Scheiter, FSC De La Salle University, 2401 Taft Ave., P.O. Box 3819, Manila, 1099, Philippines and La Salle University, 1900 W. Olney Ave., Philadelphia, PA, 19141-1199, USA, fscbjs@yahoo.com
Abstract
This paper gives a short summary of Physics Education Research (PER), literature in the field, web sources, and suggestions for research topics.
be able to light a flashlight lamp with a dry cell and a wire. Additional bad news has been that our Filipino students also do poorly in comparison to other countries.
1. Introduction
The long time complaint of physics professors is that students have serious difficulty in learning physics. Extensive research in Physics Education Research (PER) has shown that many students are not learning physics. Many students come into the physics class or lab with serious misconceptions about basic concepts in physics. From 15 to 19 years of lived experience and the common every-day use of language they think in Aristotelian physics. In the last 20 years the field of Physics Education Research has developed among university physics departments to address the problems. The University of Washington (state) awarded the first PhD in Physics Education in 1979.
2. Doing PER,
The following are suggestions on how to do PER. Keep a personal journal, recording essentials of your reading and work, with date and sign for each day. It is considered a legal document.
2.1 Background Reading
I highly recommend RL-PER1: Resource Letter on Physics Education Research by McDermott and Redish [1]. It gives a nice introduction, reviews of bibliographies, conferences, empirical studies, misconceptions, assessment instruments, instructional strategies, student difficulties, effectiveness of lab and lecture, student attitudes, theoretical perspectives, problemsolving, related fields, and research-based instructional materials. Do extensive reading in the journals: American Journal of Physics, AAPT Announcer, the PER supplements to the July 1999, 2000, and 2001 issues of AJP, The Physics Teacher, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Physics Education, Science Education, etc. It is expected there will soon be a special section of the Physical Review devoted to PER. Visit the web site of the Univ. of Maryland, PER Group [2], which has extensive references and hot-links to other PER groups. Many have their papers on-line. You must know what is happening in the field, to know what is important, and to be able to do relevant research.
1.1 Good News Bad News
The good news is that PER is the most advanced of all the science education fields. Also, physicists with rigorous experimental backgrounds have been the researchers in PER. The bad news is that regretfully, in the past, much educational research has been statistically weak. It has usually done by persons in colleges of education who had very little background in the subject matter, physics. Many such educators have had a fear of mathematics and statistics. Some education courses at some universities have the reputation of being breeze courses or a lot of hot air about the professors own personal teaching experiences. Here in the Philippines, because we were a colony of the U.S., many look upon U.S. education as a model. Beware! Various international studies have shown that the US educational system ranks low compared to many other developed countries, such as, Japan, Sweden, Singapore, and Korea. US graduate education has been good in producing scientists and engineers for research. However, US grade and high schools and colleges have been weak in science education for the ordinary citizen. Several interviews of Harvard graduates and faculty show they could not explain the seasons of the year nor
2.2 Educational Statistics
Take courses in educational research, statistics, and tests and measurements. I highly recommend: Campbell and Stanleys little book [3] on research design and dangers. They discuss: experimental and control groups, random selection, historical events that can interfere, the Hawthorne effect, 16 possible research designs and their advantages and weaknesses. Consider the OSIRIS [4] schema on doing statistics. Be familiar with a common statistical software package, like: Minitab [5], SPSS [6], SAS [7], etc. Label your
variables carefully. In some research you may have to use factor analysis.
2.3 Educational Terminology
Be aware that education and statistics have a different jargon from physics. An instrument is usually a test, survey, interview or observation protocol. Validity is a measure of whether an instrument really is measuring the concept(s) that you want to measure. It is analogous to the scientists accuracy. Reliability is a measure of an instruments consistency or repeatability. Does repeated use on the same population give the same results? It is analogous to the scientists precision. You should only do research using instruments that have good validity and reliability.
Again because of cultural differences, our Filipino students may have different misconceptions than students in other countries. This is a large area for research. There are already extensive lists of common North American student misconceptions [9, 10]. Advisers to student researchers from interested universities should get together and coordinate a national research agenda and cooperate on it. Our resources are too limited to let students grope for a topic and to be un-coordinated with other Philippine research.
References
[1] L.C. McDermott & E.F. Redish, RL-PER1: Resource Letter on Physics Education Research, American Journal of Physics, 69(9), 755-767, 1999. [2] www.physics.umd.edu/perg. [3] D. T. Campbell & J. C. Stanley, Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research, HoughtonMifflin, Boston, 1963. [4] F. M. Andrews, Guide for Selecting Statistical Techniques for Analyzing Data, Survey Research Center, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 1974. [5] R. K. Meyer, A Minitab Guide to Statistics, Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2001 [6] M. J. Norusis, SPSS, (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences), Introductory Guide: Basic Statistics and Operations, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1982. [7] SAS/ETS Software: Changes and Enhancements: Release 8.1, SAS Institute, Cary, NC, 2000 [8] Measurement Quiz; TUG-K: Test of Understanding Graphs in Kinematics; FCI: Force Concept Inventory; FMCE: Force & Motion Conceptual Evaluation; MBT: Mechanics Baseline Test; Energy and Momentum Test; BEMA: Brief Electricity & Magnetism Assessment; CSEM: Conceptual Survey of Electricity & Magnetism; DIRECT: Determining and Interpreting Resistive Electric Circuits Test; ECCE: Electric Circuit Conceptual Evaluation; RAPT: Rate & Potential Test; Wave Diagnostic Test; HTCE: Heat & Temperature Conceptual Evaluation; MPEX: Maryland Physics Expectation Survey; EBAPS: Epistemological Beliefs Assessment for Physical Science; Lawson's Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning; RTOP: Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol; VASS: Views About Science Survey (physics, chemistry, biology versions). Use titles to search Google. Web links and comments are available from www.ncsu.edu/per/TestInfo.html at North Carolina State Univ. [9] R. J. Beichner, Testing Student Interpretation of Kinematics Graphs, American Journal of Physics, 62
2.4 Instruments
Do not re-invent the wheel. There are now about 18 well-developed instruments [8] that cover many small parts of introductory physics and are available via the web. They went through extensive development work [9] and determination of: Standard error of the mean, KR-20 reliability of the whole test, reliability of a single item, discrimination of the whole test, and discrimination of a single item. Developers welcome your use and reporting your results to them. Generally, current PER researchers are mostly using the Pretest-Posttest design and compute the Hake factor, g, the normalized gain. Be aware that this
g=
postscore prescore 100% prescore
(1)
may not satisfy all of Campbell and Stanleys criteria.
3. Suggested Research Topics
At the present time, I suggest testing validity and reliability of the existing instruments here in the Philippines. What works in another country may not work here, especially because of cultural and language differences. I believe a major local difficulty for many students is unfamiliarity with many English prepositions. Tagalog has just a few prepositions. This applies to spatial location words, e.g. above, behind, below, under, beside, in front of, in back of, etc. Some instruments may have to be translated into local languages and tested for validity and reliability. Some may need to be in open-ended form to find the local misconceptions. Once you are sure of quality instruments, then replicate existing research and compare your results with the original. You can develop local benchmarks that can later be used to evaluate any educational changes here.
(8), 750-756, August 1994 gives an excellent history of development of a good test. [10] Welcome to the Student Difficulties in Physics Information Center, http://www.physics.montana.edu /physed/misconceptions/ from University of Montana, taken 10/17/04. [11] References for Misconceptions in Physics, http://tortoise.oise.utoronto.ca/~science/physmisc.htm from University of Toronto, taken 10/17/04.
