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Learning to think like a physicist: A review of research-based instructional strategies
Abstract
Many studies in physics education indicate that our conventional instruction fails to achieve objectives we desire for our students. Students leave introductory courses unable to reason qualitatively about physical processes. They use primitive formula-centered problem-solving techniques. Their minds contain a small number of facts and equations that are accessible only by random searches. In recent years, research by scientists interested in cognition and pedagogy has shown that we can do much better. This paper reviews this research and the instructional strategies that are suggested by it. The following paper reports the preliminary results of using these strategies in introductory physics courses that emphasize problem solving.
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Citations
Cited by
Singer, S., & Smith, K. A. (2013) · Journal of Engineering Education · doi:10.1002/jee.20030 · Cited by 835
Synthesis of discipline-based education research in physics
Docktor, J. L., & Mestre, J. P. (2014) · Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research · doi:10.1103/physrevstper.10.020119 · Cited by 549
Henderson, C., & Dancy, M. H. (2007) · Physical Review Special Topics - Physics Education Research · doi:10.1103/physrevstper.3.020102 · Cited by 541
Teaching and physics education research: bridging the gap
Fraser, J. M., Timan, A. L., Miller, K., Dowd, J. E., Tucker, L., & Mazur, E. (2014) · Reports on Progress in Physics · doi:10.1088/0034-4885/77/3/032401 · Cited by 422
Pedagogical practices and instructional change of physics faculty
Dancy, M., & Henderson, C. (2010) · American Journal of Physics · doi:10.1119/1.3446763 · Cited by 297
Metadata
- Authors
- Van Heuvelen, A.
- Venue
- American Journal of Physics
- Published
- 1991-10-01
- Volume
- 59
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 891-897
- ISSN
- 0002-9505 (ISSN-L)
- 1943-2909
- OpenAlex
- W2093161266
- Cited by
- 526
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 20.91
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Van Heuvelen, A. (1991). Learning to think like a physicist: A review of research-based instructional strategies. American Journal of Physics. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.16667
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
