SOCS-P: Explaining the "at rest" condition of an object

Students want to be consistent in their reasoning across situations. It seems that they will naturally try to organize and make order in their thoughts. We can help by giving them the right situations to make connections between.

(Minstrell)

SOCS-P: Teaching Introductory Physics 2.8-2.12;2.14-2.19

We cannot assume students have material mastered after the first (or even a few) exposures. It seems vital to spiral back to skills and concepts after small hiatuses, as learning can be a stubborn process.

(Arons)

SOCS-C: Learning and Instruction in Pre-College Physical Science

There is an inherent tradeoff between breadth of content covered and depth of content explored or freedom to spontaneously pursue an idea. Where is the line? What gets left out? Does it matter?

(Mestre)

SOCS P- Two Approaches to Learning Physics

I need to nuance my classroom thoughts and priorities. Next year, the focus will be on life skills instead of technical memorization, but without a clear goal it might be easy to get lost.

(Hammer)

SOCS-I: Teaching Introductory Physics 2.1-2.7

Introduce and build a concept. Have students find why it’s important. Only after, introduce the jargon. This puts emphasis on the idea and not on the memorization of a word.

(Arons)

SOCS-P: Teaching Introductory Physics 1.1-1.12; 1.17-1.18

These sections nicely line up with "Wherefore a Science of Teaching.” Specific mental constructs are necessary in order to build other concepts. Remediating and spiraling back to foundations should make learning other concepts much more efficient.

(Arons)

SOCS-I: How We Teach and How Students Learn

Contrive a situation to challenge a misconception, have students confront and resolve the issue, let them develop a new understanding for the principle, then rinse and repeat in a new context.

(McDermott)

SOC-I: Force Concept Inventory

It seems important to be able to predict where misconceptions will arise and then strategically target them. I’m worried for students that I wasn’t efficient in getting rid of enough.

(Hestenes, Wells, Swackhamer)

SOCS-I: Wherefore a science of teaching?

Specific mental structures are needed prior to the ability to grasp other concepts. Aha! This happened too often, but I did not know efficient techniques to build those structures.

(Hestenes)

Force Concept Inventory

I took the force concept inventory today. Where's the answer key? I want to know what I got! I'm fairly confident in my answers, but maybe I got tricked by some misconceptions. As I was going through the test, I definitely saw tons of areas where my students would have struggled.

The FCI seems like it would be a great pre and post test for mechanics topics. I would love to use a pretest to compile student data on particular questions and be able to target their prevalent misunderstandings. I like that it is completely focused on underlying concepts and doesn't get bogged down in the math.