Reinventing College Physics for Biologists: Explicating an epistemological curriculum

TL;DR

This study reimagined college physics for biology students by emphasizing scientific thinking and epistemology, resulting in improved conceptual understanding and epistemological gains without changing class structure.

Contribution

It introduces an epistemological curriculum tailored for biology students in physics, integrating research-based practices to enhance scientific reasoning and understanding.

Findings

Enhanced conceptual test gains with reformed curriculum

Unprecedented epistemological gains observed

Maintained traditional class structure with improved outcomes

Abstract

The University of Maryland Physics Education Research Group (UMd-PERG) carried out a five-year research project to rethink, observe, and reform introductory algebra-based (college) physics. This class is one of the Maryland Physics Department's large service courses, serving primarily life-science majors. After consultation with biologists, we re-focused the class on helping the students learn to think scientifically -- to build coherence, think in terms of mechanism, and to follow the implications of assumptions. We designed the course to tap into students' productive conceptual and epistemological resources, based on a theoretical framework from research on learning. The reformed class retains its traditional structure in terms of time and instructional personnel, but we modified existing best-practices curricular materials, including Peer Instruction, Interactive Lecture Demonstrations, and Tutorials. We provided class-controlled spaces for student collaboration, which allowed us to observe and record students learning directly. We also scanned all written homework and examinations, and we administered pre-post conceptual and epistemological surveys. The reformed class enhanced the strong gains on pre-post conceptual tests produced by the best-practices materials while obtaining unprecedented pre-post gains on epistemological surveys instead of the traditional losses.