Design principles for effective physics instruction: A case from physics and everyday thinking

American Journal of Physics

Volumn 78, Issue 12, 2010, Pages 1265-1277

  Goldberg, Fred ^a   Otero, Valerie ^b   Robinson, Stephen ^c  

^a SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

^c TENNESSEE TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 78649340250     PISSN: 00029505     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1119/1.3480026     Document Type: Article

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30. The benchmark also includes this sentence: If the force acts toward a single center, the object's path may curve into an orbit around the center. Although we include in the curriculum a homework assignment that deals with nonlinear motion, the main focus of Chap. 2 is on motion in one dimension.
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33. The PET developers decided to focus only on speed-time graphs rather than distance-time, velocity-time, and/or acceleration-time graphs because the evidence gathered from speed-time graphs would be sufficient to support the target ideas for the chapter. Also, the Newton's second law benchmark, around which the chapter was developed, focuses on change in speed, not change in velocity.
34. The version of PET that the students in the case study used was an earlier draft of the published version of PET. However, the substance of Chap. 2, Act. 1, that the students used was very similar to the final version that was published.
35. There is no evidence in the full transcript as to why Ashlie ultimately agreed with Amara, although it is possible that she remembered this idea from a previous physics course. She did not bring up this idea in her discussions with the other two members of the group.
36. The question showed images of the four students whose ideas are described. We omitted the images to save space.
37. The average normalized gain is defined as the ratio of the actual average gain (%〈post〉-%〈pre〉) to the maximum possible average gain (100-%〈pre〉) (Ref. 23).
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40. A version of PSET, suitable for large-enrollment classes, was developed with support from NSF (Grant No. 0717791). Information about this Learning Physical Science curriculum is available from the first author.