In his Feb. 15 post to PHYSLRNR, PHYS-L, PHYSHARE, AND AP-PHYSICS
listservs, Richard Hake wrote:
"... some analysis of "Physics First" implementation has been
carried out [(Pesaro (2001); Lederman & Bardeen (2002)], but
evidently not published in the open literature. Pesaro concludes that
"ONE SIGNIFICANT FINDING IS THAT ALMOST NONE OF THE SCHOOLS HAS BEEN
COLLECTING QUANTITATIVE DATA FOR SELF-EVALUATION."(My CAPS.)"
Here's data!
PHYSICS FIRST, using Modeling Instruction, produces great success!
compiled by Jane Jackson < jane.jackson@asu.edu>
Modeling Instruction Program, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
Arizona State University in Tempe
Feb. 19, 2003
Contact: RexRice@swbell.net
At Clayton High School, a public high school in a university community near
St. Louis, 4 teachers taught physics using Modeling Instruction to 148 9th
graders in 2001-02. (20% of the students are bussed from inner city St.
Louis.)
One teacher was brand-new to physics, with a degree in biology and several
years' experience teaching science in elementary school. He took our 3-week
Modeling Workshop in summer 2001, had a job for the rest of the summer, and
then began teaching. The other three teachers are experienced physics
teachers. Rex Rice is an expert modeler; and the 2 other experienced
teachers had participated in one 3- or 4-week Modeling Workshop.
The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is the most widely used and influential
instrument for assessing the effectiveness of introductory physics
instruction. A 60% score, for empirical reasons, can be regarded as a
threshold in the understanding of Newtonian mechanics.
Their 9th grade students' FCI pretest and posttest average scores are as
follows.
89 regular students: (roughly 30% are inner city students bussed to Clayton HS)
pretest: 20%. This is a random guessing score!
posttest: 44% (The new physics teacher's 58 students averaged 43%; and
the experienced teacher's averaged 47% .)
59 honors students (taught by the 3 experienced physics teachers):
pretest: 28%. This is typical in honors courses in 11th & 12th
grade.(Note #2 below.)
posttest: 71%. This is a little lower than 11th and 12th grade honors
classes of some of the best teachers of Modeling Instruction. (Jackson,
2002)
In contrast, when conventional (teacher centered) instruction is used, we
found that average posttest scores are in the upper 30%'s for regular 11th
& 12th grade courses, and the lower 40%'s for honors courses. (Note #2
below.)
The bottom line is:
1) these 9th grade regular FCI posttest scores are HIGHER than 11th and
12th grade classes under conventional instruction, even though the main
teacher is a novice physics teacher with a degree out of field,
2) these 9th grade honors FCI posttest scores (71%) are SUPERB, compared to
conventionally taught honors courses in 11th and 12 grade (the low 40%'s)!
Rex Rice wrote me: "This is important stuff, and the more people hear about
it, the better."
-----------------------------
NOTES:
1. Our FCI data for 20,000 high school students reveal that student
normalized gains (i.e., Hake gain -- defined in Note 2) in understanding
under Modeling Instruction are typically double those under traditional
instruction. Teachers who implement the Modeling Method most fully have
the highest student posttest FCI mean scores.
2. Physics education researchers cite the FCI normalized gain, <g>, in
addition to pretest and posttest scores, because it enables courses at many
different levels, from conceptual to calculus-based college physics, to be
directly compared as to effectiveness of instruction. The normalized gain,
or Hake gain, is the actual gain divided by the possible gain.
Specifically, let <. . . > mean an average over all students in a course.
Define <%gain> as the average actual gain (<%post> - <%pre>) for a course,
and define the average NORMALIZED gain (Hake 1998) for a course as:
<g> = (<%post> - <%pre>)/(100% - <% pre>
= <%gain> /(maximum possible %gain). (Ref. 1)
The <g> for the Clayton High School freshman physics courses were:
regular: <g> = 0.3
honors: <g> = 0.6
These normalized gains are HIGHER than those for conventionally taught high
school and college courses. Richard Hake found (Hake 1998a,b; 2002) that
for the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) (Hestenes et al. 1992, Halloun et al.
1995) as given to Interactive Engagement (IE) and Traditional (T)
introductory mechanics courses: <<g>>48IE = 0.48 ± 0.14sd is over twice
that of <<g>>14T = 0.23 ± 0.04sd. Saul and Redish (1998) found that for
traditionally taught college algebra-based and calculus-based physics
courses, <g> is typically 0.2.
We found that for traditionally taught high school physics courses, <g> is
typically 0.2. (See Ref. 1, for example. <g> can be imputed by comparing
each Modeling Workshop teacher's baseline posttest class average, when they
were teaching traditionally, with their pretest class averages for the same
course in succeeding years.)
3. A Clayton HS biology teacher told me in Feb. 2003, "Clayton High School
juniors are much better prepared to deal with biology at the molecular
level."
4. More information about implementation of Physics First at Clayton High
School (and 9th grade physics taught with Modeling Instruction in other
schools) will be available soon at <http://modeling.asu.edu/listserv.html>
REFERENCES:
"Findings of the Modeling Workshop Project (1994-2000)", a 15 page document
online in pdf at <http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/Research>. Written by David
Hestenes, Jane Jackson, and Sharon Osborn Popp as part of the final report
to the National Science Foundation for the Teacher Enhancement grant
entitled "Modeling Instruction in High School Physics".
Hake, R.R. 1998a. "Interactive-engagement vs traditional methods: A
six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics
courses," Am. J. Phys. 66, 64-74; online as ref. 5a at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~sdi/>.
Halloun, I., R. R. Hake, E. P. Mosca, and D. Hestenes. 1995. Force Concept
Inventory (Revised 1995); online (password protected) at
<http://modeling.asu.edu/R&E/Research.html>.
Jackson, J., 2002. A Longitudinal Study of Student FCI Scores under
Modeling Instruction, American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT)
Announcer 32 (2), p.110.
Saul, J. M. and Redish, E., Evaluation of the Workshop Physics
Dissemination Project: Final Evaluation Report for FIPSE Grant #P116P50026
(1998). Online at <http://www.physics.ucf.edu/%7Esaul/articles/index.html>.
---------------------------------
Jane Jackson, Co-Director, Modeling Instruction Program
Box 871504, Dept.of Physics & Astronomy,ASU,Tempe,AZ 85287
480-965-8438/fax:965-7331 <http://modeling.asu.edu>
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