July 26–30, 2014
63
Monday afternoon
projects, using Rosie Revere, Engineer as an example. I’ll share the videos
of the live event as well as videos produced for the online programming,
the online game, and related lesson plans for teachers or parents. http://
stemread.niu.edu/
BF08:
2:50-3 p.m. Role of Mentors in STEM After-School
Programs
Contributed – Anindya Roy, Johns Hopkins University, Materials Science and
Engineering, Baltimore, MD 21218-2680;
Michael Falk, Materials Science and Engineering, Johns Hopkins University
Yolanda Abel, Steven Sheldon, Carolyn Parker, School of Education, Johns
Hopkins
Kavita Mittapalli, MN Associates, Inc. External evaluator, SABES
More than 60 students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty members from
Johns Hopkins University (JHU) participate in the after-school component
of the STEM Achievement in Baltimore Elementary Schools (SABES)
project (NSF MSP Grant No. DUE-1237992). The after-school program
complements in-school STEM teaching, teacher training and support, and
community partners involvement in this cross-disciplinary and multi-
faceted initiative. In its first year of implementation, SABES operates in
three elementary schools in different neighborhoods in Baltimore. Johns
Hopkins School of Engineering, Education, and Sociology collaborate with
Baltimore City Public Schools administration, schools, and community
development corporations to implement SABES. In our presentation, we
share feedback from the JHU scholars/mentors regarding their experience
and perspectives working with elementary students. Their input provides
insights into how best to design mentorship opportunities and build a
model for university students in an after-school setting in an effort to
increasing outreach and partnership initiatives of universities.
BF09:
3-3:10 p.m. Multidisciplinary Outreach: A
Partnership with Math Circle
Contributed – Shawn A. Weatherford, Saint Leo University, Lewis Hall 111, St.
Leo, FL 33574-6665;
Monika Kiss, Saint Leo University
Beginning a physics outreach efforts without an existing framework can
appear daunting to the uninitiated. In 2012, I partnered with a mathemati-
cian to add physics and engineering activities to an established mathemat-
ics outreach program hosted by Saint Leo University called Math Circle.
Math Circle is a national movement to provide pre-high and high school
students a place to live and love mathematics. At Saint Leo University,
Math Circle is structured to run weekly in the late afternoon and includes
participants from third grade to 11th grade. This presentation will discuss
the goals for these physics outreach activities within the context of the
goals of the Math Circle outreach program. The presentation will also
provide a reporting of successful activities and the future direction for
continued support of combined outreach activities for students with vary-
ing mathematical skills.
BF10:
3:10-3:20 p.m. Give Peas a Chance: A Citizen Science
Discovery
Contributed – Miranda C P Straub,116 Church St. SE, Minneapolis, MN
55455-0213;
The Zooniverse is a suite of online citizen science projects that has provided
an opportunity for volunteers to contribute to science and humanities
research without requiring extensive training or expertise. It uses crowd-
sourcing methods to make independent classifications useful to researchers
on the science teams. Since the launch of the first Zooniverse project in
2007, the organization has grown to more than 25 projects and reached the
1,000,000 participant mark in early 2014. While the goal of using volun-
teers for data processing has been successful, there have been unexpected
examples of genuine discoveries by citizen scientists along the way. This
talk will focus on the discovery of a class of galaxies called the “Green Peas,”
which were discovered by Galaxy Zoo volunteers in 2007. I will highlight
elements of the scientific research process they used to characterize these as
a new class of object, and explain identify common themes that can be used
to encourage further serendipitous discoveries in other projects.
Session BG: K-12 PER
Location: Tate Lab 166
Sponsor: Committee on Research in Physics Education
Co-Sponsor: Committee on Physics in High Schools
Date: Monday, July 28
Time: 1:30–3:20 p.m.
Presider: Dan Crowe
BG01:
1:30-2 p.m. How Knowledge of Students’ Ideas Affects
Teaching*
Invited – Michael C. Wittmann, University of Maine, Orono, ME 04469-5709;
One joy in teaching physics lies in attending to students’ ideas, taking them
seriously, analyzing on the fly where they need help, building on what they
know, and enabling them to go further than they might have expected. Can
the skill of listening to and working with student ideas be taught? As part
of two graduate-level courses in physics education research, we emphasize
attention to student thinking through analysis of student work, carrying
out interviews, and studying classroom video. In this talk, I’ll present our
course design, evidence of why this approach matters, and some stories by
teachers who have gone through our course on the effect it had on their
teaching.
*This work is sponsored in part by NSF grants DRL-1222580 and DUE-0962805.
BG02:
2-2:30 p.m. Review of an Integrated Physical
Science Course for K-8 Teachers
Invited – Barbara L. Gonzalez,* California State University Fullerton, Depart-
ment of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Fullerton, CA 92834-6866; bgonzalez@
fullerton.edu
Sissi L Li, Michael E Loverude, Roger Nanes, California State University
Fullerton
Physics-Chemistry 102, “Physical Science for Future Elementary Teachers”
is one of three courses that were developed at California State University
Fullerton as part of an NSF-funded initiative to enhance the science con-
tent understanding of prospective teachers; the other courses cover geology
and biology. PHYS-CHEM 102 is taught in a weekly six-hour integrated
lab format, with enrollment limited to 26 students per section, and little
or no lecture instruction. The course emphasizes learning science with
a strong focus on conceptual understanding, such that teachers will see
science as an interconnected discipline with real-world implications, rather
than a collection of facts and equations. We will describe the course and
its development, present research data illustrating the need for the course
and its effectiveness in developing conceptual understanding of physical
science. We will also present data from recent efforts to incorporate NGSS
and describe future prospects for the course.
U.S. Department of Education FIPSE #P116Z100226
*Sponsors: Daniel Crowe Michael Loverude
BG03:
2:30-2:40 p.m. Analysis of Students’ Scientific
Creativity in an After-school Physics Program
Contributed – Kathleen A. Hinko, University of Colorado Boulder, 440 UCB,
Boulder, CO 80309-0001;
Creativity is the ability to produce work that is both novel and appropri-
ate; without creativity, science does not move forward in meaningful ways.
Educational efforts to engage students in authentic physics practices should
thus incorporate support for scientific creativity and creative processes.
In this talk, I present a framework for characterizing scientific creativ-
ity exhibited by K-8 students in an after-school physics program. This
framework blends aspects of systems and component creativity along with
features specific to physics such as experimental design, problem solving
and the nature of science. I apply this framework to the analysis of in situ
and interview video data of students as well as student notebooks. Implica-
tions for structural and curricular design elements that affect scientific
creativity are discussed.
