Another reason that physics students learn by rote

American Journal of Physics

Volumn 67, Issue 7 SUPPL. 1, 1999, Pages

  Elby, Andrew ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND   (United States)

^b Thomas Jefferson High School   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0012855903     PISSN: 00029505     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1119/1.19081     Document Type: Article

References (17)

1. The existence of this problem is discussed in L. C. McDermott, "What we teach and what is learned - Closing the gap," Am. J. Phys. 59, 301-315 (1991).
2. M. Schommer, "Effects of beliefs about the nature of knowledge on comprehension," J. Ed. Psych. 82 (3), 406-411 (1990).
3. B. Eylon and F. Reif, "Effects of knowledge organization on task performance," Cognit. Instr. 1 (1), 5-44 (1984).
4. D. Hammer, "Epistemological beliefs in introductory physics," Cognit. Instr. 12 (2), 151-183 (1994).
5. On surveys, students' responses also reflect how they think they are supposed to answer.
6. This research also led to results, reported elsewhere, concerning the correlations between epistemological beliefs, self-reported study habits, and academic performance. See A. Elby, "Why do epistemologically sophisticated students perform better in physics classes?," unpublished manuscript.
7. These categories emerged from examining popular textbooks. The pilot version of the questionnaire contained a fifth category, "historical sketches," but it was eliminated, because almost all the pilot-study subjects indicated that they spend negligible time on that category. Subjects had the opportunity to write in other categories, but few did. The pilot study led to the hypothesis that students "distort" their study habits towards formulas and away from concepts.
8. A careful analysis of students' written responses supports these conclusions.
9. Before calculating these distortion percentages, I normalized Diana's time allocations, which originally added up to 109% on average. (By contrast, students' time-allocation percentages for themselves summed to approximately 100% on average.) Figure 1 is based on this normalized data. It turns out, however, that the distribution of total distortion percentages comes out nearly the same whether or not the time-allocation data is normalized. With normalization, the average total distortion percentage was 26.7 ± 11.95. Without normalization, it was 27.3 ± 12.81. In both cases, the distribution has approximately the same shape.
10. The fact that nearly 40% of students recommended that Diana spend "over 40%" of her time on concepts, and the fact that time allocations for Diana added up to 109% on average, may indicate that "over 40%" often meant over 50%. But nothing in my analysis rides on this speculation.
11. D. Hammer, "Two approaches to learning physics," Phys. Teach. 27 (12), 664-670 (1989).
12. This research also led to results, reported elsewhere, concerning the correlations between epistemological beliefs, self-reported study habits, and academic performance. See A. Elby, "Why do epistemologically sophisticated students perform better in physics classes?," unpublished manuscript.
13. A. Schoenfeld, "When good teaching leads to bad results: the disasters of well taught mathematics classes," Educat. Psycholog. 23, 145-166 (1989).
14. 11 "Ellen" demonstrates, the strategy of trying to obtain a deep understanding might not be viable for all students in fast-paced courses.
15. See E. Seymour and N. M. Hewitt, Talking about Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences (Westview, 1997). They show that men disproportionately attribute poor performance to the unfairness of the test and instructor, while women disproportionately attribute poor performance to their own lack of ability.
16. L. C. McDermott, P. S. Shaffer, and the Physics Education Research Group, Tutorials in Introductory Physics: Homework (Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1998).
17. E. F. Redish, J. M. Saul, and R. N. Steinberg, "Student expectations in introductory physics," Am. J. Phys. 66, 212-224 (1998).