This FIRE project brings cognitive scientists together with physicists. The goal is to improve high school and college students' physics proficiency through specific types of lab experiences that allow the student to become part of the physical system being studied. Lab experiences where students have direct experience with physics quantities (e.g., feeling forces--as opposed to reading about force, seeing forces being exerted on someone else, or even measuring forces with instruments) may lead to the use of brain areas devoted to sensory and motor (sensorimotor) processing when students later think and reason about the physics concepts they experienced. Recent research shows that when these sensorimotor areas are involved in thinking and reasoning tasks, people's understanding of those concepts improves (Beilock et al., 2008). The research institutions involved in this work are the University of Chicago and DePaul University.
This proposal addresses two inter-related questions: (1) Can learning methods that involve the sensorimotor system enrich physics knowledge and understanding? (2) If so, is this because sensorimotor representations are accessed when students recall (e.g., during tests) concepts learned via movement? A total of five experiments will be conducted. First, three laboratory experiments are used to substantiate the special contributions that the sensorimotor system has to students' understanding of the physics of mechanics. Specifically, the relationship between changing angular momentum and torque is explored as students manipulate a rotating bicycle wheel. Experiment 1 compares how direct sensorimotor experience with the forces related to torques (versus observing forces or measuring their effects with instruments) impacts student understanding. Experiments 2 and 3 explore the cognitive and neural substrates that drive the link between experience and understanding using behavioral dual-task procedures and a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm. Experiments 4-5 move to the classroom to explore how sensorimotor experience relates to learning, and to indentify the optimal time (before vs. after lecture) for sensorimotor experience to occur. In Experiments 4, students' experiences in high school physics labs will be manipulated to explore how sensorimotor experience relates to students' understanding of the physics of mechanics. In Experiments 5, introductory-level college physics students will be tested to investigate (1) how sensorimotor lab experiences impact performance on numerical test questions, (2) when this type of lab experience is most beneficial, and (3) for which type of questions this benefit occurs.
This work uncovers the cognitive and neural mechanisms by which certain lab experiences work. The focus on sensorimotor learning mechanisms is exciting as students are themselves the most critical piece of lab equipment. The findings from this work will advance physics education and also have the potential to impact learning in other STEM domains as well. For instance, understanding complex molecular structures in chemistry or structural relations in engineering may benefit from the types of sensorimotor experiences explored here. In sum, the knowledge acquired from this grant will aid in the design of quick, effective, and generalizable guidelines that educators can use in their own teaching to advance student learning and STEM achievement.
STEM achievement in the U.S. begins to trail foreign achievement in middle school, with large gaps occurring during high school and beyond (Grigg et al., 2006). STEM achievement at these grades impacts whether students will major in science-related fields in college and go on to STEM careers. Indeed, the underrepresentation of Americans in science and technology positions may be due, in part, to low achievement in these formative years. Our work bridges cognitive science and physics education as a means to advance student learning in the area of physics known as mechanics. Guided by theories of embodied cognition, we show how sensorimotor experiences can help cement a more thorough understanding of introductory physics concepts. According to theories of embodied cognition, our thinking – whether we are recalling memories, reasoning or making inferences – involves activations of the sensory and motor systems initially used to acquire relevant information. According to embodied cognition theories, interaction with physical quantities should improve students’ understanding of relevant concepts in physics by activation of sensory-motor brain systems used to execute similar actions in the past, adding kinetic details and meaning to their thinking. Traditionally, introductory physics courses begin with topics in mechanics, and it is here that students first encounter the challenging concept of vector quantities such as velocity, force, torque and angular momentum. These quantities lend themselves quite naturally to sensorimotor labs (or exercises) in which the student becomes an active part of the experiment. In this grant, we performed experiments in the psychology laboratory involving student behavior and brain imaging (fMRI), as well as randomized field experiments in college physics classrooms to explore the importance of physical experience in science learning. We reasoned that understanding science concepts such as torque and angular momentum is aided by activation of sensory-motor brain systems that add kinetic detail and meaning to student thinking. We tested whether physical experience with angular momentum increases involvement of sensory-motor brain systems during subsequent student reasoning and whether this involvement aids understanding. The physical experience, a brief exposure to forces associated with angular momentum, significantly improved exam scores. Moreover, improved performance was explained by activation of sensory-motor brain regions when students later reasoned about angular momentum. This finding specifies a mechanism underlying the value of physical experience in science learning, and leads the way for classroom practices where experience with the physical world is an integral part of learning. There is a rapid shift in education from traditional classrooms to virtual and on-line learning environments. Though there are certainly benefits associated with learning which does not require a teacher to be physically present or a student to be in a classroom, one issue that is often ignored – at least in science education – is that during virtual learning, students are not physically experiencing the concepts they are learning about. Even active learning environments centered around small group collaboration and problem solving often involve students observing phenomena rather than physically experiencing them. In physics classrooms for instance, observing the consequences of mechanical forces on objects and feeling the consequences of a force directly are both construed as active student engagement. Focusing on the physics of mechanics, we demonstrate that physical experience with the material world leads to the recruitment of sensory-motor brain systems evolved for computing forces, vectors, and trajectories, which aids understanding of complex science concepts involving kinetics. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology recently identified the adoption of empirically validated teaching practices as critical to the goal of increasing the number of college-level STEM graduates by 33%. Physical experience can enhance learning and is thus crucial to consider in the design of effective science curricula.
