[论文解读] Exploring Pedagogical Content Knowledge of Physics Instructors and Teaching Assistants Using the Force Concept Inventory

Alexandru Maries, Chandralekha Singh|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jul 26, 2013

Science Education and Pedagogy参考文献 54被引用 8

一句话总结

本研究通过评估物理教师和助教（TAs）在力的概念测验（FCI）中预测常见误解的能力，探究了其学科教学知识（PCK）。基于约900名学生的FCI前测数据，研究发现，尽管具备专业知识，教师和助教在识别学生普遍存在的误解方面频繁失败，且这种能力与教学经验无显著相关性。

ABSTRACT

The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) has been widely used to assess student understanding of introductory mechanics concepts by a variety of educators and physics education researchers. One reason for this extensive use is that many of the items on the FCI have strong distractor choices that correspond to students' alternate conceptions in mechanics. Instruction is unlikely to be effective if instructors do not know the common alternate conceptions of introductory physics students and explicitly take into account students' initial knowledge state in their instructional design. Here, we discuss research involving the FCI to evaluate the pedagogical content knowledge of both instructors and teaching assistants (TAs) of varying teaching experience. For each item on the FCI, the instructors and TAs were asked to identify the most common incorrect answer choice of introductory physics students. We also discussed the responses individually with a few instructors. Then, we used the FCI pre-test and post-test data from a large population (~900) of introductory physics students to assess the pedagogical content knowledge of physics instructors and TAs. We find that while both physics instructors and TAs, on average, performed better than random guessing at identifying introductory students' difficulties with FCI content, they did not identify many common difficulties that introductory physics students have, even after traditional instruction. Moreover, the ability to correctly identify students' difficulties was not correlated with the teaching experience of the physics instructors.

研究动机与目标

• 评估物理教师和助教在介绍性力学中对学生常见误解的学科教学知识（PCK）。
• 调查教学经验是否与识别学生在FCI上错误概念的能力相关。
• 评估利用FCI干扰项分析作为诊断教师PCK有效性的工具。
• 探讨专家知识与物理教育中对学生困难认知之间的差距。

提出的方法

• 向约900名大学物理初学者发放力的概念测验（FCI），收集其误解的前测数据。
• 向教师和助教展示每个FCI题目，要求其指出学生最常选择的错误答案选项。
• 收集并分析教师和助教的回答，以评估其预测学生误解的准确性。
• 对部分教师进行个别访谈，以探究其预测背后的推理过程。
• 使用统计比较方法，评估教师和助教的表现是否优于随机猜测及学生数据。
• 将教师预测的准确性与教学年数进行相关性分析，以评估教学经验的影响。

实验结果

研究问题

• RQ1 物理教师和助教在多大程度上能准确预测FCI上学生最常选择的错误答案？
• RQ2 教学经验与识别学生在FCI上误解的能力之间是否存在显著相关性？
• RQ3 教师和助教的预测模式与学生在FCI题目上的实际表现相比如何？
• RQ4 对教师进行的个别访谈揭示了其在预测学生误解时的哪些推理见解？
• RQ5 传统的物理训练和经验在多大程度上能带来对学生错误概念的有效认知？

主要发现

• 平均而言，物理教师和助教在识别FCI上最常见错误答案选项方面表现优于随机猜测。
• 尽管表现优于随机猜测，教师和助教仍未能正确识别出前测数据中广泛存在的学生误解。
• 预测学生误解的能力与物理教师的教学年数无显著相关性。
• 即使在完成传统教学后，许多教师和助教仍未认识到在学生前测数据中明显存在的普遍错误概念。
• 大量FCI干扰项——代表了有充分记录的学生误解——未被大多数教师和助教识别。
• 本研究揭示了专家物理知识与对学生误解认知之间的显著差距，表明物理教育者在学科教学知识方面存在明显不足。