Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Physics Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Physics

Comparing Experts And Novices In Solving Electrical Circuit Problems With The Help Of Eye-Tracking, David Rosengrant, Colin Thomson, Taha Mzoughi Jul 2017

Comparing Experts And Novices In Solving Electrical Circuit Problems With The Help Of Eye-Tracking, David Rosengrant, Colin Thomson, Taha Mzoughi

David Rosengrant

In order to help introductory physics students understand and learn to solve problems with circuits, we must first understand how they differ from experts. This preliminary study focuses on problem-solving dealing with electrical circuits. We investigate difficulties novices have with circuits and compare their work with those of experts. We incorporate the use of an eye-tracker to investigate any possible differences or similarities on how experts and novices solve electrical circuit problems. Our results show similarities in gaze patterns among all subjects on the components of the circuit. We further found that experts would look back at the circuit while …


Pre-Service Physics Teachers And Physics Education Research, David Rosengrant Jul 2017

Pre-Service Physics Teachers And Physics Education Research, David Rosengrant

David Rosengrant

Training pre-service teachers requires, among other things, content knowledge, pedagogical skills and pedagogical content knowledge. Teacher preparation programs have little, if any spare time to add more courses/activities to their program. However, I argue in this paper that we, as educators, must enhance the amount of physics education research in our pre-service physics teacher training programs. In this study, I analyze the results of two different types of exposure to physics education research (PER) from two different groups of pre-service physics teachers in our masters of arts and teaching program. The preliminary results show, for example that the PER helped …