Improving students' understanding through research
Dr. Chandralekha Singh
University of Pittsburgh
The goal of physics education research is to help close the gap between
teaching and learning. I will discuss, drawing from my own research as
examples, how the lessons learned from physics education research can be
applied to all STEM disciplines. I will discuss my research that
emphasizes the importance of understanding the relevant prior knowledge
of students and designing instruction such that it builds on students'
existing knowledge. Our research suggests that the difficulty of a
problem not only depends on its inherent complexity but on the
familiarity and intuition one has developed about it. Our research also
suggests that students should be taught effective problem solving
strategies explicitly while they acquire content knowledge because
everyday life does not prepare students for the disciplined approach to
problem solving required to solve complex problems in the STEM
disciplines. Finally, I will discuss why instructional approach should
value and encourage students to be actively engaged and work with each
other and provide examples of how such collaboration gives students an
opportunity to be able to solve problems that each student alone may not
be able to solve.