9354375 Bendall Students who enroll in introductory physics courses already have ideas about how the world works. Very often these beliefs are in contradiction with those of the expert physicist. There is evidence that traditional instruction has little impact on the pre-instruction beliefs of students. What is lacking on the students' part is an integrated conceptual understanding of the fundamental principles, laws and concepts of physics. In contrast, physicists understand and utilize comparatively few principles and concepts of physics to explain a wide variety of phenomena; principles such as conservation of energy and concepts such as acceleration. In order for students to develop a conceptual understanding in physics, they need the opportunity to make sense of the physics principles and concepts for themselves. Our goal is to provide them with this opportunity through a two part learning strategy. First, students will write extensive explanations which require the use of specific physics ideas. The act of writing well constructed explanations externalizes students' thoughts, helps them to organize their thoughts in meaningful ways, and helps students to make qualitative connections between ideas. The explanation assignments will require consideration of traditionally difficult issues such as the differentiation between velocity and acceleration. These assignments will be developed based on a taxonomy of conceptual change proposed by Dykstra. Second, students will participate in a collaborative peer evaluation of the explanations. Through peer evaluation students are able to see how others think about physics concepts and principles, individuals can clarify their own thinking, and they can receive immediate feedback from peers. We have proposed a number of evaluations to guage the impact of our strategies on student understanding. If successful, our learning strategy could be implemented in both the university algebra-based and calculus-based physics courses , and with modifications could be used at other course levels.
