Researchers at Carolina Coastal University are developing a new course and curricular materials that explicitly target scientific reasoning and metacognition within a conceptual physics context. The main goals of this project are: (1) to improve scientific reasoning, preparing non-STEM students to be effective citizen leaders and developing underprepared physics majors into reasonably competent science students ready for the rigors of an intense program of study; and (2) to change student's views about science and knowledge construction from a positivist-oriented view, where they regard science as an existing body of knowledge, to a more constructivist-oriented view, where acquisition of new knowledge is a creative endeavor requiring a variety of epistemological resources.
One novel and potentially transformative aspect of this project is the attention paid to issues surrounding student learning for two wildly disparate (at least by surface appearances) groups of students---the non-STEM major and the first-semester physics major. The investigators have shown significant insight in recognizing that these two groups have similar educational needs; lessons learned from both groups, and perhaps from interactions between the groups, will be of great interest to the larger physics and scientific community.
