Research

My research explores the conceptual development of students in student-centered learning environments. I am interested in the evolution of the system as a whole, including students, tools, teachers, course materials, and the interactions among these components. Another current research interest stems from experience working with prospective and practicing K-12 teachers. Reform methods often encourage the elicitation of students' prior knowledge, but several different notions of what to do with that prior knowledge exist within the community of educational practitioners and researchers. I am currently working to understand how prospective and practicing teachers conceive of students' prior knowledge and how they capitalize on it to empower students to inform their own teaching and as a resource on which students can build.

The Constructing Physics Understanding In a Computer
Supported Learning Environment Project (CPU Project)
In 1991, I began a five-year, NSF-funded project with Fred Goldberg, Patricia Heller, and colleagues. The purpose of the project was to develop materials for a 3-year workshop that could model student-centered pedagogy for teaching physics. The workshop was intended for high school teachers and college professors. During the pilot phase of the project, we implemented these modules in our course for prospective elementary teachers. My doctoral research stemmed from the observations made during the first two years of implementation in a physics course for prospective elementary teachers. Students were videotaped as they worked in groups for the purpose of understanding the role of the computer simulator versus laboratory apparatus in students’ construction of physics knowledge, and the role of the construction of students’ knowledge in shaping the social and material learning environment. (For more information on the CPU Project see http://cpuproject.sdsu.edu)

Constructing Physics Understanding for Prospective
and Practicing Elementary Teachers
In 2001, I began a five-year, NSF-funded project with Fred Goldberg from San Diego State University, and Steve Robinson from Tennessee Tech University. The project builds off the needs that were recognized during implementation of the CPU Project. The purpose of the project is to develop a three-tiered curriculum/professional development package for teaching physics to prospective and practicing elementary teachers, for thinking about students’ thinking, and for recognizing and using students’ prior knowledge. The third part of the package consists of professional development materials for physics instructors and professional development providers for the curriculum stated above. Research that accompanies this curriculum involves understanding how college physics faculty and prospective and practicing elementary teachers conceive of student prior and evolving knowledge. This understanding will inform the development and iterations of the new curriculum as well as elementary methods instruction in the same way that understanding students’ conceptions in physics has informed the community’s physics curriculum-development over the past 30 years.