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Current ProjectsResearch Associate, Minority Student Pipeline Math Science Partnership Project:Andrew Elby, PI. I am working with elementary and middle-school teachers on professional development activities aimed at helping teachers engage their students in authentic inquiry, towards the final goal of strengthening the pipeline by which African American students stick with science through middle school and high school. Through classroom observations, surveys, and interviews, we are studying the effects of this professional development on the beliefs, conceptual understanding, and teaching practices of the teachers, and on the beliefs, approaches to learning, conceptual understanding, and achievement of the students.Project Director, Improving students' mathematical sense-making in engineering: Research and development,, NSF EEC-0835880. Andrew Elby, PI. For engineers, effective use of mathematics is more than manipulating equations and applying algorithms; it involves mathematical sense-making, looking for coherence and meaning partly by translating back and forth between symbolic relations on the page and relations (causal and functional) in the world. Mathematical sense-making is central to students' success with modeling and design. Yet, many engineering students have trouble with it.Research Associate, Toward a new conceptualization of what constitutes progress in learning physics, K-16: Resources, frames, and networks. NSF REC/ROLE 0440113 (2005-2008). David Hammer, PI. Learners' Ontologies in Physics: A Dynamic Systems View Developing a dynamic account of the ontology of naïve physics reasoning, how students classify features of the world as entities vs. processes vs. events and how those classifications affect students' explanations and problem-solving. This work involves (1) building a phenomenology of the patterns and transitions in ontologies evident in student reasoning, and (2) using that phenomenology as a basis for modeling cognitive structure and dynamics. Instructionally, this research could inspire strategies to harness students' everyday ontological resources to make learning science a more meaningful and connected experience for them.Modeling the coupled dynamics of student behaviors and reasoning during collaborative learning activities Investigating how students' non-verbal behaviors (posture, gesture, vocal register, visual focus) influence and are influenced by the substance of their reasoning during collaborative group work. Our analysis reveals a dynamic coupling of students' behaviors, epistemic framings (ways of approaching knowledge generation) and physics reasoning. This has instructional implications, by identifying easy-to-spot behaviors that tend to indicate the presence of productive student reasoning.Research Associate, Use of Math in Upper-level Undergraduate and Graduate Physics Edward F. Redish, PI In a small study, we investigated the dynamics of how graduate students coordinate their mathematics and physics knowledge within the context of solving a homework problem for a plasma physics survey course. Students were asked to obtain the complex dielectric function for a plasma with a specified distribution function and find the roots of that expression. While all the 16 participating students obtained the dielectric function correctly in one of two equivalent expressions, roughly half of them (7 of 16) failed to compute the roots correctly. All seven took the same initial step that led them to the incorrect answer. There was a perfect correlation between the specific expression of dielectric function obtained and the student's success in solving for the roots. We analyzed student responses in terms of a resources framework and suggest routes for future research. Previous ProjectsGraduate Research: Analytical-computational models of laser-irradiated gases of atomic clusters.Thomas M. Antonsen, PI. Developed a model of interaction of intense laser pulses with a nano-scale atomic cluster, explaining the mechanism of laser-energy absorption by the cluster. This is of interest in generation of x-ray radiation for tomography/lithography, high-energy ions and electrons for particle acceleration, and as a potential tabletop neutron source. Developed the first self-consistent simulations for propagation of laser pulses through clustered gases, predicting parameter ranges for optimizing laser pulse guiding through clustered gases, an issue of major interest for laser-based accelerators. Last Modified ... 5 Sept 2008 |