Using skateboarding to develop a culturally relevant tutorial on static equilibrium

TL;DR

This paper presents a culturally relevant physics tutorial on static equilibrium using skateboarding to engage diverse students, employing the elicit-confront-resolve strategy to enhance understanding and motivation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel skateboarding-based tutorial on static equilibrium designed with the elicit-confront-resolve strategy within a culturally relevant pedagogy framework.

Findings

Students showed increased engagement and motivation.

The tutorial effectively addressed misconceptions about static equilibrium.

Preliminary evidence suggests improved conceptual understanding.

Abstract

Culturally relevant pedagogy (CRP), initially developed by Ladson-Billings, is an instructional framework for supporting diverse learners by drawing on their cultural backgrounds and experiences. In line with the CRP framework, we developed a tutorial on static equilibrium using skateboarding, a popular activity on university campuses, as a culturally relevant context. To help students refine their conceptions about static equilibrium documented in the physics education research (PER) literature, we used the elicit-confront-resolve (ECR) strategy to develop the tutorial. In this paper, we provide a detailed account of how we operationalized the ECR strategy in designing the sequences of questions in the tutorial. Additionally, we present anecdotal evidence to show that this research-based culturally relevant tutorial appears to effectively engage students and motivate their interest in learning physics.