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William J. Gerace

Publications and source records attributed to William J. Gerace.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2008

Teacher Learning of Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment

Technology-Enhanced Formative Assessment (TEFA) is a pedagogy for teaching with classroom response technology. Teacher Learning of TEFA is a five-year research project studying teacher change, in the context of an intensive professional development program designed to help science and mathematics teachers learn TEFA. First, we provide an overview of the project's participating teachers, its intervention (consisting of the technology, the pedagogy, and the professional development program), and its research design. Then, we present narratives describing the unfolding change process experienced by four teachers. Afterward, we present some preliminary findings of the research, describe a "model for the co-evolution of teacher and pedagogy" that we are developing, and identify general implications for professional development.

physics.ed-ph↗
arXiv2007

Measuring and modeling physics students' conceptual knowledge structures through term association times

Traditional problem-based exams are not efficient instruments for assessing the "structure" of physics students' conceptual knowledge or for providing diagnostically detailed feedback to students and teachers. We present the Free Term Entry task, a candidate assessment instrument for exploring the connections between concepts in a student's understanding of a subject. In this task, a student is given a general topic area and asked to respond with as many terms from the topic area as possible in a given time; the "thinking time" between each term-entry event is recorded along with the response terms. The task was given to students from two different introductory physics classes. Response term thinking times were found to correlate with the strength of the association between two concepts. In addition, sets of thinking times from the task show distinct, characteristic patterns which might prove valuable for student assessment. We propose a quantitative dynamical model named the Matrix Walk Model which is able to match many aspects of the observed data. One particular feature of the data -- a distinct "spike" superimposed on the otherwise log-normal distribution of most thinking time sets -- has not been fit. The spike, other patterns observed in the data, and the proposed phenomenological model could all benefit from a grounding in cognitive theory.

physics.ed-ph↗
arXiv2005

ASK-IT/A2L: Assessing student knowlede with instructional technology

The ASK-IT/Assessing-to-Learn (A2L) project is an attempt to bring a strategic approach to learning, instruction, and communication. ASK-IT/A2L seeks to integrate formative assessment and classroom response system use with physics instruction at both the high school and college levels. In this guide, we present a structure for discussing the new mindset students need in an ASK-IT/A2L classroom, consisting of twelve "habits of mind" for students to develop. To help teachers plan instruction, we present a model of five stages of cognitive development that most students need to follow to develop desirable knowledge and skills. We show how a typical lesson might be organized around "items," the smallest unit of ASK-IT/A2L lesson planning: questions, problems, or tasks given to students to work on individually or in groups. To help with item creation, we present our model-based design paradigm and suggest tips for avoiding common pitfalls and ways to match up cognitive goals with habits of mind. Finally, we apply the habits of mind to the metacognition of teachers and students.

physics.ed-ph↗
arXiv2005

Teaching vs. learning: Changing perspectives on problem solving in physics instruction

Problem solving is central to physics instruction. Results from Physics Education Research (PER), however, demonstrate that traditional ways of teaching with problem solving are inefficient and ineffective for promoting true physics expertise. PER findings give rise to a perspective on physics expertise, learning, and problem solving that can illuminate the reasons why problem solving in traditional instruction fares poorly and suggest remedies. At the heart of the remedies lies a rethinking of the instructional model in which teachers focus less on presenting subject material and more on engineering learning experiences and guiding students' learning efforts, while students strive to become active, selfmonitoring constructors of knowledge.

physics.ed-ph↗
arXiv2005

Probing physics students' conceptual knowledge structures through term association

Traditional tests are not effective tools for diagnosing the content and structure of students' knowledge of physics. As a possible alternative, a set of term-association tasks (the "ConMap" tasks) was developed to probe the interconnections within students' store of conceptual knowledge. The tasks have students respond spontaneously to a term or problem or topic area with a sequence of associated terms; the response terms and timeof- entry data are captured. The tasks were tried on introductory physics students, and preliminary investigations show that the tasks are capable of eliciting information about the stucture of their knowledge. Specifically, data gathered through the tasks is similar to that produced by a hand-drawn concept map task, has measures that correlate with inclass exam performance, and is sensitive to learning produced by topic coverage in class. Although the results are preliminary and only suggestive, the tasks warrant further study as student-knowledge assessment instruments and sources of experimental data for cognitive modeling efforts.

physics.ed-ph↗
arXiv2005

Designing Effective Questions for Classroom Response System Teaching

Classroom response systems (CRSs) can be potent tools for teaching physics. Their efficacy, however, depends strongly on the quality of the questions used. Creating effective questions is difficult, and differs from creating exam and homework problems. Every CRS question should have an explicit pedagogic purpose consisting of a content goal, a process goal, and a metacognitive goal. Questions can be engineered to fulfil their purpose through four complementary mechanisms: directing students' attention, stimulating specific cognitive processes, communicating information to instructor and students via CRS-tabulated answer counts, and facilitating the articulation and confrontation of ideas. We identify several tactics that help in the design of potent questions, and present four "makeovers" showing how these tactics can be used to convert traditional physics questions into more powerful CRS questions.

physics.ed-ph↗