Title: Students' interpretations of disciplinary convention with the first law of thermodynamics
The transfer of knowledge within and across disciplines remains a compelling challenge for modern STEM education and further research is needed to expand on the student-exhibited cognitive and affective gains achieved by innovative cross-disciplinary STEM instructional techniques. This study seeks to support crossdisciplinary STEM instruction and learning by investigating how students use the first law of thermodynamics, a crucial principle to the crosscutting concept of energy and matter, to bridge across disciplinary boundaries. An interview study was undertaken wherein chemistry-, engineering-, and physics-major students addressed a common set of conceptual prompts written with different field-specific conventions. This report focuses on students’ interpretations of the provided forms of the first law and work equations between prompts. Emergent findings demonstrate field-specific interpretations of arbitrary differences in convention and strong barriers to transfer. Derived implications inform suggestions for scaffolding across such disciplinary differences and for future work in this area. more »« less
Parobek, Alexander P.; Chaffin, Patrick M.; Towns, Marcy H.
(, International Journal of Science Education)
Blonder, Ron; Jones, Gail
(Ed.)
A widespread call has been made to develop and support more integrated approaches to STEM education. The first law of thermodynamics serves as a guiding principle for the crosscutting concept of energy and matter. A qualitative interview study was undertaken to support integrated approaches to STEM education by exploring how chemistry, physics, and engineering students (n = 40) transfer first law concepts across disciplinary contexts. Acquired interview data were analysed through the lens of the dynamic transfer framework to reveal the underlying contextual elements students used to know with. Emergent trends across the disciplines revealed how these applied reasoning approaches and epistemologies were realised by each discipline. Productive transfer is shown to be facilitated by the coordination of different disciplinary epistemologies. Suggestions are made to practitioners on how to support students in applying different reasoning approaches when addressing first law problems. The applied methods also serve as a promising methodology for future investigation of students’ transfer of crosscutting concepts.
Schwarz, C.V.; Cooper, M.M.; Long, T.M.; Trujillo, C.M.; de Lima, J.; Kesh, J.; Noyes, K.; Stoltzfus, J.R.
(, Proceedings from the 14th International Conference of the Learning Sciences.)
Abstract: Disciplinary silos and large amounts of specialized information in chemistry and biology courses undermines how students can make sense of these disciplines. This manuscript reports on how mechanistic reasoning across undergraduate courses may guide students towards more enduring and meaningful science learning. This team of chemistry, biology, and education researchers engaged in conversation about core mechanisms important for student learning in each disciplinary area that would connect to core mechanisms in the other disciplinary areas. The team also engaged in design work around written mechanistic explanations assessment items in each area. Those discussions prompted awareness of disciplinary and pedagogical similarities and differences about mechanisms. Our findings report on the mechanistic reasoning we focused on in each disciplinary area and how those were embodied in the assessment prompts. We discuss implications for teaching students who are traversing different subject matter information and ways of knowing.
Despite efforts to diversify the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce, engineering remains a White, male-dominated profession. Often, women and underrepresented students do not identify with STEM careers and many opt out of STEM pathways prior to entering high school or college. In order to broaden participation in engineering, new methods of engaging and retaining those who are traditionally underrepresented in engineering are needed. This work is based on a promising approach for encouraging and supporting diverse participation in engineering: disciplinary literacy instruction (DLI). Generally, teachers use DLI to provide K-12 students with a framework for interpreting, evaluating, and generating discipline-specific texts. This instruction provides students with an understanding of how experts in the discipline read, engage, and generate texts used to solve problems or communicate information. While models of disciplinary literacy have been developed and disseminated in several humanities and science fields, there is a lack of empirical and theoretical research that examines the use of DLI within the engineering domain. It is thought that DLI can be used to foster diverse student interest in engineering from a young age by removing literacy-based barriers that often discourage underrepresented students from entering and pursuing careers in STEM fields. This work-in-progress paper describes a new study underway to develop and disseminate a model of disciplinary literacy in engineering. During this project, researchers will observe, interview, and collect written artifacts from engineers working across four sub-disciplines of engineering: aerospace/mechanical, biological, civil/environmental, and electrical/computer. Data that will be collected include interview transcripts, observation field notes, engineer logs of literacy practices, and photographs of texts that the engineers read and write. Data will be analyzed using constant comparative analytic (CCA) methods. CCA will be used to generate theoretical codes from the data that will form the basis for a model of disciplinary literacy in engineering. As a primary outcome of this research, the engineering DLI model will promote the use of DLI practices within K-12 engineering instruction in order to assist and encourage diverse, underrepresented students to engage in engineering courses of study and pursue STEM careers. Thus far, the research team has begun collecting and analyzing data from two electrical engineers. This work in progress paper will report on preliminary findings, as well as implications for K-12 classroom instruction. For instance, this study has shed insights on how engineers use texts as part of the process of conducting failure analysis, and the research team has begun to conceptualize how these types of texts might be used with K-12 students to help them conduct failure analyses during design testing. Ultimately, this project will result in a list of grade-appropriate texts, evaluative frameworks, and activities (e.g., failure analysis in testing) that K-12 engineering teachers can use to prepare their diverse students to think, act, read, and write like engineers.
Holland_Zahner, Dana_G; Harper, Raquel_P
(, Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice)
The transfer pathway from community college to university holds promise for advancing equity in STEM because it is followed by disproportionately high numbers of underrepresented students. Among the challenges these students face is cultivating belonging in multiple institutional settings. By combining belonging and validation theories, this qualitative study investigated how underrepresented students’ belonging developed in their STEM majors, highlighting differences between students who transferred and those who began as first-time in college (FTIC) students. The findings revealed that for each type of belonging experience a smaller proportion of transfer students than FTIC students experienced validation and a higher proportion experienced invalidation. Department-based transfer student orientation and ongoing programming were uniformly validating to STEM transfer students. The study provides evidence that major belonging is an academic phenomenon that is within the scope of institutional responsibility to improve. Practical implications for administrators and faculty are included as are suggestions for future research.
Altindis, Nigar; Bowe, Kathleen_A; Couch, Brock; Bauer, Christopher_F; Aikens, Melissa_L
(, International Journal of STEM Education)
Abstract BackgroundThis study investigates undergraduate STEM students’ interpretation of quantities and quantitative relationships on graphical representations in biology (population growth) and chemistry (titration) contexts. Interviews (n = 15) were conducted to explore the interplay between students’ covariational reasoning skills and their use of disciplinary knowledge to form mental images during graphical interpretation. ResultsOur findings suggest that disciplinary knowledge plays an important role in students’ ability to interpret scientific graphs. Interviews revealed that using disciplinary knowledge to form mental images of represented quantities may enhance students’ covariational reasoning abilities, while lacking it may hinder more sophisticated covariational reasoning. Detailed descriptions of four students representing contrasting cases are analyzed, showing how mental imagery supports richer graphic sense-making. ConclusionsIn the cases examined here, students who have a deep understanding of the disciplinary concepts behind the graphs are better able to make accurate interpretations and predictions. These findings have implications for science education, as they suggest instructors should focus on helping students to develop a deep understanding of disciplinary knowledge in order to improve their ability to interpret scientific graphs.
Parobek, Alexander P., and Towns, Marcy H. Students' interpretations of disciplinary convention with the first law of thermodynamics. Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10482914. 2023 PERC Proceedings . Web. doi:10.1119/perc.2023.pr.Parobek.
Parobek, Alexander P., & Towns, Marcy H. Students' interpretations of disciplinary convention with the first law of thermodynamics. 2023 PERC Proceedings, (). Retrieved from https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10482914. https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2023.pr.Parobek
Parobek, Alexander P., and Towns, Marcy H.
"Students' interpretations of disciplinary convention with the first law of thermodynamics". 2023 PERC Proceedings (). Country unknown/Code not available: American Association of Physics Teachers. https://doi.org/10.1119/perc.2023.pr.Parobek.https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10482914.
@article{osti_10482914,
place = {Country unknown/Code not available},
title = {Students' interpretations of disciplinary convention with the first law of thermodynamics},
url = {https://par.nsf.gov/biblio/10482914},
DOI = {10.1119/perc.2023.pr.Parobek},
abstractNote = {The transfer of knowledge within and across disciplines remains a compelling challenge for modern STEM education and further research is needed to expand on the student-exhibited cognitive and affective gains achieved by innovative cross-disciplinary STEM instructional techniques. This study seeks to support crossdisciplinary STEM instruction and learning by investigating how students use the first law of thermodynamics, a crucial principle to the crosscutting concept of energy and matter, to bridge across disciplinary boundaries. An interview study was undertaken wherein chemistry-, engineering-, and physics-major students addressed a common set of conceptual prompts written with different field-specific conventions. This report focuses on students’ interpretations of the provided forms of the first law and work equations between prompts. Emergent findings demonstrate field-specific interpretations of arbitrary differences in convention and strong barriers to transfer. Derived implications inform suggestions for scaffolding across such disciplinary differences and for future work in this area.},
journal = {2023 PERC Proceedings},
publisher = {American Association of Physics Teachers},
author = {Parobek, Alexander P. and Towns, Marcy H.},
editor = {Jones, Dyan and Qing X. Ryan, Qing X. and Pawl, Andrew}
}
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