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  Session: Lecture/Classroom
  Paper Type: Poster
  Title: Developing Scientific Reasoning in Pre-HS Education Majors by Eliminating Possibilities
  Meeting: 2013 Summer Meeting: Portland, Oregon
  Location: N/A
  Date:
  Time: 9:15AM
  Author: Jon D. H. Gaffney, Eastern Kentucky University
72460159236, jon.gaffney@eku.edu
  Co-Author(s): None
  Abstract: One goal for a physics content course for pre-HS education majors is to help students develop scientific reasoning skills, particularly with respect to deductive and hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Opportunities for making such development explicit arise in two separate units that build from "Physics by Inquiry" materials. In magnetism, we use Sudoku to introduce the concept of eliminating possibilities as deduction, and we use that process to determine whether objects are permanent magnets, ferromagnetic objects, or non-magnets. When studying electric circuits, we introduce multiple possible conceptual models for electric circuits, and students are tasked with the job of "busting" them by using hypothetico-deductive reasoning. These activities allow students who are largely inexperienced with scientific reasoning to play at some fundamental processes, providing groundwork for more intense evidence-based reasoning later in the semester.
  Footnotes: None
  Presentation: Gaffney_AAPT_2013.pdf

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