Amy's EPSRI Congress Presentation

My EPSRI Congress presentation was broken into two parts, based loosely on the prompts that Rachel and Sam provided.

I started by talking about what I felt that I learned, both instruction- and research-wise, and how this was connected to where I come from.

In a 'technical sense,' I was 'raised' in an instructional environment that is mostly worksheet-driven and in which the direction that the instruction takes is largely predetermined (and dictated by the worksheets). In E2, I observed instruction that was more open-ended, and the direction that the class takes changed dynamically. Although I got the impression that Leslie and Stamatis always had a (sometimes detailed) plan, the plan changed as the teachers chose the questions that they wanted to pursue.

My previous instructional experiences, alongside my observations of E2 instruction, allowed me to better characterize some of the differences between 'guided' and '(more) open' inquiry:

On of the joys of the EPSRI for me was seeing how what is done at SPU is 'the same kind of different as me.' Although the quantitative research that I've done for the past five years is very different than the qualitative research that is done in the Energy Project, the two kinds of research intersect in more ways than I had anticipated. Both explore and synthesize multitudes of data (albeit different kinds), and although research questions are defined differently (and at different times), the research questions are semi-dynamic beings that evolve over time. (Perhaps that the research is so similar shouldn't surprise me, since we are all scientists, but it did!)

As I wrote in my EPSRI reflection, significant for me throughout this process is the continued refinement of a number of questions about assessment -- what it means, what it looks like, etc. Although not articulated very well, I included a slide attempting to hint at this:

The latter half of my presentation focused on what I thought about for most of the EPSRI, which was an interaction between Stamatis and a group of E2 teachers. I wrote several blog posts about this (five, in fact: one, two, three, four, and five). In short, Stamatis and this group of teachers had an interaction that just didn't work (by self report of both Stamatis and the teachers), and I wanted to figure out why. The clip that alerted me to this gem is here:



Context for the video can be found in this blog post.

I shared what struck me about the video:


And then my own impressions of the 70-minute interaction that took place. My first impression of the interaction was that the group just didn't get the question that had been asked of them. But then I noticed that they repeated (or appropriately reinterpreted) the question a number of times throughout the interaction, so maybe they did get the question, and something else went wrong. I started to look for other potential mismatches (and blogged about them here and here).


Ultimately, though, I began to wonder whether there was some other (perhaps deeper) 'mismatch' that took place during the 70-minute interaction, which generated a number of open questions:
...and ultimately led me to start paying attention to (a) things that the E2 participants said about the instructors or (b) things they said about their own classrooms (i.e., about themselves as instructors). I shared this clip of Don talking about his classroom:



(Context for this video can be found here.) This video itself led to a flurry of questions for me:


Finally, I ended with a series of possible directions for this 'project seed:'


As an afternote, Costas and I had coffee on Wednesday (immediately following the EPSRI Congress), and he suggested that anyone who might pursue this further should look into the 'learning styles' literature (in particular, search for papers by Sternberg).

Benedikt's EPSRI Congress Presentation

At the end of this year's EPSRI, all the scholars and directors gave presentations on what they had done/learned/experienced during the research institute. Rachel had posted some prompts for our presentations, and I let them loosely guide my own preparation for the congress. In the end, I decided to show some cool pictures that I had taken during "EPSRI Camp" and talk a little bit about the research themes that I had been working on since the last EPSRI in 2010, and how they influenced my experience at this year's EPSRI.



On the first day last year, I had participated as an extra person in an energy theater activity in E2. Thinking about how the spatial arrangement of instructor and participants influences or is influenced by the instructional style / instructional intentions, I spent several months analyzing this episode after the EPSRI. Rachel had pointed me in the direction of literature on "Participation Framework Theory," and at the AAPT winter meeting 2011 in Jacksonville, FL, I presented my take on participation framework theory, using the episode from the very first day of last year's EPSRI.



This year, Rachel opened up this topic for me again with her blog post about Positioning in Small-Group Interaction. I picked it up for my presentation and had a couple of slides with preliminary thoughts for possible analyses in terms of participation framework theory.




A more recent research theme is multimodal analysis. Inspired by Eleanor's PERC paper from last year, I tried to create rich and detailed pictures of learners' ideas by looking not only at what they say but also take into account how they say it (prosody) and the gestures that accompany speech. In particular, I analyzed the video episode "Hot to Cold or Cold to Hot," in which three participating teachers in last year's E2 are trying to figure out how a refrigerator works. I presented results from this analysis at FFPER 2011 in Bar Harbor, and also at the AAPT summer meeting and PERC 2011 in Omaha. Since Virginia's research area is gestures (she knows much more about it than I do), and she had already talked about them in her presentation on Monday, I decided to focus on prosody analysis. Here is a slide with some results from my analysis from last year's data:



I had compared the pitch contour of a teacher's utterance of "know" to the typical intonation of "duh" (according to Merriam Webster online dictionary) to ascribe meaning to the prosody of her utterance in terms of commitment. However, since there are many ways to say "know" and "duh," I am tempted to do some more research on this topic. The opportunity presented itself when I observed Stamatis use the word "know" five times within one minute of dialog with "my" group in this year's E2, and Leslie led a discussion about "duh" statements in the same class, a week later. When I was putting together my presentation, I only had the video of the first episode handy, so I decided to go with "know" instead of "duh."





All these analyses were preliminary, I did not want to ascribe any meaning to any of my observations or come up with inferences and interpretations. After I had already put together my slides, I realized that I had only written up observations, without even having to restrain myself not to make inferences at the same time. I realized that apparently, my training with Rachel over the past year had resulted in me automatically keeping observations and inferences apart.

After all these more methodological aspects, I briefly summarized my big research theme, proximal formative assessment. Virginia had pointed me in the direction of a similar interaction to the "Hot to Cold, Cold to Hot" episode in her blog post, so I used some of her pictures for my slide. I did not perform any analysis on this, but I definitely want to keep it on the back burner in case I need it for further study.



Unfortunately, I had to cut off the discussion about my "EAR model" of proximal formative assessment, because the time was running out. At some point, I definitely want to continue talking to Stamatis about the points he raised (step missing between Assessment and Reaction).

Toward the end of my presentation, I briefly tipped my hat to recurring content themes
that I have been thinking and blogging about. Telling stories about energy, thinking about energy in electrical circuits, and thinking about forms and categories of energy had all been things that I had been thinking (and blogging) about before, and that had come up again in this year's EPSRI.

After showing some pictures of products of the EPSRI pastry kitchen, I concluded my presentation with a slide about "Souvenirs" that I could take home from the EPSRI, this year:



The biggest take-away from this year's EPSRI for me was to realize how much I was able to learn since last year's EPSRI, and how much I seem to have grown as a researcher. Thanks so much to Rachel and Sam for organizing EPSRI 2011 and making it an awesome experience- again!

Abby's E1 Reflection for the 2011 EPSRI Congress (Thermal Energy)

I really enjoyed both presenting and hearing other presentations this week. I was struck by the huge variety of observations and the impressive amount of information gleaned in just two weeks. I began my presentation with a couple of ideas that I had been mulling over during my two weeks of observation. I first talked about Teacher Analysis vs. Research Analysis. I learned that when doing research, there is a tendency for me to look at the teaching itself and analyze its effectiveness. I found out from Rachel that this seems to be a tendency that is common among teachers, and that it is not all bad. However, I noticed that here, the research tries to refrain from judging and opinion. It is encouraged to take the teacher out of the system and take judgments out. I have to retrain my brain a bit to not judge immediately and make claims about how I would do things differently if I was in control of all classrooms everywhere. Here is the slide that I used:

Next I talked about Research for Teaching and Learning vs. Research for Understanding. While I recognize that there IS value to doing research just for the sake of understanding and learning, my motivation at the moment lies with doing research to find understanding that WILL help students and teachers in their classrooms in a more immediate fashion. I want to help make a change in the education system as well as learn how students learn physics. I am still working on this idea and I really appreciate the help I have had from Amy (and others) in understanding the differences and similarities between these two motivators. It was also interesting to hear that many of those in the room have shifted back and forth between them.

Finally - I got to the "meat" of my talk - looking at the value the teachers place on thermal energy. I interpreted the word value in two ways. First, that some of the teachers tended to reject the idea that thermal energy could account for an equivalent loss in kinetic or potential energy. Their impression was that 5.0 Joules of kinetic energy seemed to be much more energy than 5.0 Joules of thermal energy. Second, they saw that thermal energy was worth less to humans than other forms of energy and at times deemed it a "useless" form of energy.
I think that the above statement is far clearer than my slide I used in my talk - and I realized during the talk that I could have been clearer than the below:

From here, I showed two videos about the discomfort surrounding the first kind of value of thermal energy. I previously blogged about the first video here, but then I showed a shorter clip of this video where Tim talks about using thermal energy as a Hail Mary Pass. (A Hail Mary Pass being used here as a long shot, last ditch effort when there are no other options left!) I find it intriguing that Tim and others don't like the idea of so much GPE going away into heat. Thermal energy (or “heat” as it is used in our class) seems to be this energy that is worth less to people. Below I think it is important to see that Ingrid, and the group in general, find the body heating up as acceptable rather than before when the energy was suggested to just go away as heat. It seems to be easier to accept when the body (something we can relate to and sense more easily) is suggested.

Then, when talking about Thermal Energy being a lesser energy, not worth as much in terms of its usefulness, I used the video from my blog about Shrinking People here, and Amy's example from E2 about thermal energy being a dead end here.

Finally I ended the talk (over my time) with this slide:
I feel like it was an incredibly good thing for me to put together a presentation for this Congress. It really helped me to organize my thoughts and see how much had happened in two short weeks for me. My learning curve was steep and I felt like this was a great experience for me to understand how video can enhance research.

In hindsight, I believe I definitely should have used more transcriptions in my videos and I should have done an introduction about my background (Where I Have Come From) - I completely left that out! I wasn't sure what to put into the talk or how official to make it and knowing what I know now, I would have put more pictures into the talk as well. I also worry that I repeated too many things from the blog that had already been stated, but I felt like for me, it was the first time I worked to tie together more than one video into one coherent idea...or two!

Virginia's Reflection on Presenting for the EPSRI Congress

A few days ago, I gave my presentation to summarize my experience at EPSRI over the last two weeks. I tried to present a mixture of my background and research interests, methods and content I learned, as well as some gesture analysis I did while I was there. I was grateful that we were required to give a presentation because it helped me organize my thoughts and forced me to try and explain past, present, and future research that I’m interested in. It also was an outstanding learning experience for me because it was my first presentation to a research group!

My slides:



One thing I learned from my presentation was just how carefully you have to pick your words. Since it’ so condensed, you’ve really got to make sure every line reflects exactly what you mean. One of my slides (slide 16) used the word “help” twice, which unfortunately made it sound like I was saying gesturing is a separate auxiliary entity that assists with cognition (instead of being a part of cognition). Not exactly the message I was going for while trying to support embodied cognition! Also unfortunate is the way this wording made it sound like Kerry intentionally gestured to “help” her visualize or feel. Oops.



Another thing I was thinking about was whether I should have captioned the video I showed. I struggle with whether or not to caption videos when I want people to be paying attention to gesture. I think it can make a huge difference in comprehension, but I find that when something is captioned, I’m always reading and not really watching. If I were showing a clip longer than a minute in the future, I will probably caption it and then show a non-captioned version for the second viewing. The other solution, of course, is to provide a written transcript and hand it out.

Finally, I am still working on how to not panic in public speaking situations. I don’t think I’m shy and I usually don’t have too much trouble sharing my opinion in a group discussion, but the second I’m at the front of the room at the helm of a Powerpoint, everything changes. Even in a group of people I have comfortably spoken in front of, I still am totally and utterly terrified of presenting. And unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer yet for how to work on this in the future. Take a course? Ick. People always tell me with practice it won’t be an issue, but I have my doubts. Guess I’ll have to keep thinking about that one.

Overall, presenting was a very positive experience and I was really pleased to get the opportunity to share my ideas with the research team. I also think it was great practice for giving future talks and I learned a lot about what I want to do in the future. Plus, I’m really thankful that I’ve come home with a presentation to show my advisor and anyone from home that wants to know what I was up to for two weeks (I already showed my mom)!

Vortex of intellectual intensity

This morning we had the beginning of the EPSRI Congress.  Abby's presentation was hugely stimulating and had several of us talking through lunch (at PCC) about the special status, if any, of thermal energy - whether energy transformations always involve some, whether and when thermal energy can transform into other forms of energy, etc.  The discussion included stretching springs, falling comets, quantum field oscillations, the sufficiency of various types of explanations, learners' interest/disinterest in being told answers, what happens in a conversation when people show interest/disinterest in what someone else is saying, potential tradeoffs between (Rogerian) genuineness and acceptance -- it was one of those conversations.  As we got up to walk back to SPU, a guy sitting across from us pulled at my sleeve and said, "Excuse me, before you go -- could you tell me what caused this vortex of intellectual intensity that you all seem to be experiencing over there?  Because I'm pretty sure I heard you talking about physics at first, and just now you were talking about interpersonal psychology, and I'm just trying to imagine what would make you have such an amazing conversation for such a long time."

I don't remember exactly what I said - I think I explained that we study the teaching and learning of physics and that we were having a sort of a conference, sharing findings from a common data set of video of people learning physics together.  I do know that I grinned hugely, because I am so grateful to have such a great field and such awesome colleagues, with whom these kinds of conversations happen all the time!

Why are some activities boring to watch? social-construction vs. private-cognitive

This morning in E1, the teachers were doing calculations, and Abby and Virginia got bored watching them. They asked Rachel about what to do about it on the chat, and a fascinating discussion ensued (copied here with irrelevant parts edited out):

10:53 Virginia Flood: Is it just me or is watching people interact with calculators kinda lame?

10:54 Abby Daane: I feel like they should just use one as an example now and be done with this but I know this is just me being greedy as a researcher

10:55 Virginia Flood: I guess they seem to like doing this.

10:55 Abby Daane: Is Rachel around?

10:55 Abby Daane: I was just wondering what she thought about this

10:55 Abby Daane: Is there something we can look for or listen for?

10:56 Abby Daane: I really don't have any interest

10:56 Virginia Flood: I think just type up interesting action stuff.

10:57 Virginia Flood: Like every now and then my guys show each other something.

10:59 Rachel Scherr: Hi, I just tuned in. What's up?

10:59 Abby Daane: well - my group is calculating....

10:59 Rachel Scherr: You're bored?

11:00 Abby Daane: well

11:00 Abby Daane: kinda

11:00 Virginia Flood: My group is calculating.

11:00 Abby Daane: just wondering if there is something I should be looking at that would help during calculations

11:01 Rachel Scherr: The first year that I observed this class, there was so much that was so exciting, and then there were parts that were utterly dull to observe. Since during the dull parts I had a lot of time to think, I really did some introspection about WHY it was so dull to watch, and what I thought that meant about teaching and learning.

11:01 Abby Daane: ooooooo I like it!

11:02 Rachel Scherr: For me it was actually huge. Because the dull parts were... how I had been teaching for ten years.

11:03 Abby Daane: I feel like this part is sort of important though - the math part of physics is important right?

11:04 Abby Daane: I mean - not for understanding the conceptual part - but for problem solving

11:04 Abby Daane: but that is not conceptual at all - more like just math

11:05 Rachel Scherr: Right, and maybe there's stuff going on inside people's heads that would be really great if only we could know about it. because the problem is, you're not really getting access to what they're doing, correct? since they are working kind of privately?

11:05 Abby Daane: yes.

11:05 Abby Daane: or at least they are doing a lot of math that doesn't translate well

11:05 Abby Daane: (on head phones at least)

11:07 Rachel Scherr: and here we are at a learning theory question. or at least i am. because if there is nothing for you to observe, there is nothing for them to observe about each other, and there isn't any (or not much) social construction of knowledge.

11:07 Abby Daane: true so they probably aren't learning new stuff - they are back to practicing

11:08 Abby Daane: (but at the same time - this skill can be important - but it is more skill-building and not knowledge gaining

11:08 Rachel Scherr: so if you have a social-construction theory of learning, then there can't be much learning happening right now.

11:09 Rachel Scherr: but if you have a private-cognition model of learning, you can think of this as being time well spent.

11:09 Abby Daane: can you have both?

11:10 Rachel Scherr: This is a hot area in learning sciences. The two theories have very different research questions, standards of evidence, etc

11:10 Rachel Scherr: so it is hard to "have both"

11:10 Rachel Scherr: and very interesting to try to find data and research questions that explore the shared areas

11:10 Abby Daane: hm. I mean - do both within a classroom at different times

11:12 Rachel Scherr: Can you alternate talking with private work time? i mean, of course you can, so i must not be understanding your question yet. say more?

11:13 Abby Daane: I mean to ask if the two theories exclude the other theory or do they both think you can learn in different ways?

11:14 Abby Daane: can you have different models for different times in the class?

11:14 Abby Daane: and do each "side" think that their way is the only way?

11:14 Rachel Scherr: the social-construction people (which by now includes me) say that since there is no way to get *evidence* of private cognition, there's not really anything to talk about.

11:15 Abby Daane: but there still could be learning going on

11:15 Rachel Scherr: The private-cognition people say that obviously there IS private cognition, since we all feel ourselves doing it, so let's attempt to model it.

11:15 Abby Daane: it's just boring because you can't do anything with it

11:15 Abby Daane: I see

11:15 Abby Daane: so neither are "against" the other, just not interested in it

11:17 Rachel Scherr: Right. I would say it's a little antagonistic sometimes, because one side's data is the other side's noise. It's hard for each to get their minds around the other way of thinking.

11:17 Abby Daane: hm

11:17 Abby Daane: this is fascinating

11:18 Rachel Scherr: More fascinating than calculations

Rachel told me about it at lunch, and we reminisced about 2009 when we first found ourselves in Abby and Virginia's position. We've talked a lot about what it means about instruction and our values when we're bored watching instruction, and I think we have a lot of similar values around this.

So I was surprised when I read the chat and found myself strongly disagreeing with something Rachel said. I was excited to discuss it with her, and figured hey, why not do so semi-publicly?

When Abby said, "Can you have both?" Rachel said not really, and identified herself with the social-construction side of the debate. My answer to this question would be very different: "You have to do both! Either one by itself is inadequate and only tells part of the story." I agree that it would be difficult for any individual researcher to try to do both at the same time, and that it makes sense to focus on one or the other, but I feel strongly that for our community (or any community) to tell a complete story about learning, that story ultimately has to include both.

Rogerian Discourse in a group interaction

I just wanted to showcase this short clip (E1 110817 1338 T2 1-06-35 Rogerian Discourse) of Leanna in E1 engaging in Rogerian Discourse with Christine. Lane has just asked them to discuss which elicitation questions (which they interpret to include scenarios) they found useful and why:

When Lowering a Ball with const. KE - where does the GPE go?

I found 20 minutes of gold! :) An awesome discussion resulted when Lane lowered a bowling ball at a constant speed and asked the teachers to perform ET for this act. This was directly after the teachers had performed ET for a scenario where Lane was lifting a bowling ball at a constant speed. The group struggled to figure out where the GPE goes as it is being lowered.

What I find particularly fascinating about this clip was that Jessica (and others) mentioned the idea of the GPE transferring into heat SEVEN times before the group accepted it. Below, I have listed out the moments where heat was suggested as a solution. It wasn't until moment #9 that the idea was accepted and the group was able to proceed with their theater.

1. [00:06:48.03] Jessica: Could it be heat?
{Jessica first introduces the idea that the GPE is being transferred to heat.}
2. [00:07:16.30] Jessica: I think the GPE goes to heat.
{Conversation continues without comment about Jessica's suggestion.}
3. [00:09:08.27] Jessica: You know what? Seriously, the only place it could be going is heat cause it's obviously not going anywhere useful.
4. [00:09:46.00] Jessica: It's so much easier if we just have it be heat.
Debra: yah, I think I'm with you. {to Jessica}
5. [00:11:04.05] Jessica: So how about we have some of the people who are going from GPE to Kinetic go away as heat or go into the earth or whatever you're....
6. [00:12:13.24] Marni: Let's just lose one person to heat, or something.
Gary: I don't think we need any heat.
7. [00:13:00.01] Jessica: To hell with heat!
{others echo this sentiment}
8. [00:14:43.29] Leanna: I'm beginning to think that it {heat} going to the air is a good idea.
Tim: That just seems so like,
Jessica: ...like a give away
Tim: It's just like a Hail Mary pass, it's just like I don't know, let's just go...
9. [00:16:19.27] Jessica: Couldn't we just have his body heat up?
Ingrid: Exactly! THAT'S IT! YOU'VE GOT IT because SO!

I have noticed several things (and this is just a start):

- The wording Jessica uses for #9 is different than the rest of the suggestions because she talks about Lane's "body" heating up instead of the heat going away. I think this idea is more agreeable to the group because it is a concept that people have experienced first hand and can be felt. People can imagine heating up from lifting weights, so they are ok with Lane expelling heat from his body instead of the heat spreading into the air, earth, or Lane's hands (all things that were previously suggested).

- Ingrid was the 5th person in the group out of eight to agree with Jessica. She made this idea of heat the majority opinion of the group. (Was she the tipping point that the group needed?) Is a majority agreement usual for ET or does it just require the loudest one to agree?

- I find it interesting that Jessica says, "To hell with heat!" after suggesting it four times. She has decided that the CPE is being converted to KE for Lane and "to hell with heat." But I wonder if this is just a tactic she is using to be a part of the group or if she really did change her mind in the middle? She doesn't given up on heat ultimately, since she brings it up again three minutes later. (Although Leanna jumps on the heat wagon in the middle of Jessica's indecision so perhaps that helped to convince Jessica to return to her idea.) It is fascinating to look at the group pressure on her and how she reacts over the 20 minute period.

- This video also contains some rich points of interest regarding ideas about energy and force comparisons for both Kimberly and Gary that are not part of the heat conversation that could also be interesting to look at in more detail.

I have a 22 minute long clip that I won't make you watch (E1 110812 14:03 ET) but I wanted to point out a few of the things I noticed. If you so desire, I have a content log you can refer to that is going up in the E1 Episodes folder called E1 110812 1403 ET.GPE2Heat.

Stamatis’ Characterization of Leslie’s Teaching

In this post, I talked about a discussion that Stamatis led about Leslie’s interaction with the class as they negotiated ‘laws’ that connect force and energy. The E2 teachers were discussing what knowledge, skills, and dispositions that Leslie contributed to make the negotiation so successful.

Toward the end of the conversation, Stamatis contributed what felt to me to be his own perception of Leslie’s teaching. Take a look. (This episode is entitled ‘SV reflecting on LA’ and can be found in the original video ‘E2 110817 1333 L Mic 2’ at 1.48.30.)

Stamatis describes “this kind of teaching” (I think meaning Leslie's 'kind of teaching') as not only meaningful, transfer-able, and enduring, but also anxiety-inducing and messy. He also says that it is transferable because the process involves checking consistency with a multitude of physical scenarios.

So, my question is…to what extent, if at all, does Stamatis’ own instructional style affect his interpretation of Leslie’s?

Why gesture when no one’s looking?

Just the other day in Seattle I watched a man on his Bluetooth headset waving his hands in the air. People often gesture when they know that they can’t be seen by their listener. Is this just conversational habit? Or is it a sign that gesturing is part of thinking?

Last Thursday afternoon in E1, Table Six was working out the force story of shooting a rubber band off your fingers. Lane asked them to focus in on “the launch act.” He explains: “It's going to start the instant I release the rubber band, okay? And if you like, the instant after I release the rubber band, and it's going to finish when the rubber band is no longer making contact with my finger.”

After some discussion with the group, Sam starts drawing out the forces on the whiteboard. They have drawn two “elastic” opposing forces (in orange) and one blue “thumb force.”



Kerry, however, seems to have some reservations.

Kerry: See what's weird to me about this, this might be getting back to the energy, is that the reason the rubber band mo::oves is not the same as the force, like the force-
Sam: I'm sorry Kerry, I missed that.
Kerry: -that-
Pattie: I know, I have to not think of energy while we're talking about the force
Kerry: (shakes her head) Okay, all right. So I'm not gonna do that.
Pattie: But you can, I think I totally know where you're at
Kerry: Why is the rubber band moving, how does that relate to the net force?

Kerry uses her left hand to stretch out an imaginary rubber band on her thumb. She holds the stretched imaginary rubber band for 16 seconds and through and past her 14 second statement!

Now, here it is in slo-mo (thanks to Benedikt). This is 11 seconds of the gesture extended to 32 seconds. You can tell that no one is looking at Kerry until Pattie turns her head at 00:11 of the original and 00:27 of the slo-mo.



What’s going on here? Kerry is looking up. I would infer that in this moment, she’s aware that no one is looking at her. I think this is an example of a gesture being used to help a speaker think: she is working out the idea that the motion of the rubber band when it is released is not due to the thumb that was initially holding it. If it’s not to illustrate what she’s saying to the group, then why gesture? Is she holding the imaginary rubber band to help her visualize what’s happening? Or help her feel what’s happening? Or both?

And what is Kerry really saying, anyway? She bounces her right hand when she says, “the reason the rubber band moves is not the same as the force.” This is the “thumb force” hand in the whiteboard picture. It seems to me that she is trying to tell the group, hey wait! Maybe the “thumb force” is not part of the “launch act.” It’s something else that makes the rubber band move.

Finally, this moment kind of makes me think of Benedikt’s proximal formative assessment paper. Pattie seems to have not realized that Kerry’s idea is about a specific force (the thumb force) when she says, “I know, I have to not think of energy while we're talking about the force.” Has Pattie inappropriately assessed Kerry’s idea?

E2 Teachers’ Characterizations of an Interaction with Leslie

Yesterday, in the E2 debriefing meeting, someone mentioned that Stamatis had led a class discussion about Leslie’s facilitation of ‘rule-making with forces and energy’ (my paraphrase --- meaning that they were coming up with rules for how energy transfers and transformations are connected to forces). Apparently, there was a generally good feeling – among the E2 teachers – about how the day’s events had proceeded and the consensus that had been reached, and Stamatis took the opportunity to reflect on what had been happening in the classroom between the teachers and Leslie. Given my new fascination with this stuff, I just had to watch it for myself.

Stamatis started the discussion by making two different claims:

• Claim #1 is that Leslie already knew the laws (he calls them generalizations). (My interpretation of this is that Leslie knows the laws are RIGHT. Correct me if I’m wrong, Stamatis.)

• Claim #2 is that Leslie probably suspects that the way in which the laws have been written (by the class) is going to be problematic down the road. (My interpretation of this is that Leslie knows that the rules are NOT RIGHT, but they work – at least moderately well – for the examples that we’ve seen, and they’ll figure out the problems later.)

After making these two claims, Stamatis asks the teachers, “What is the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that Leslie needed to have or exhibit in order to do what she did?” And then he points out that by reflecting on this, they can think about how they might implement this type of effective instruction in their own classrooms.

I watched the whole discussion, and here are some of the things I heard teachers saying (in terms of Leslie’s knowledge, skills, and disposition):

1. Leslie (is effective because she) has ‘muddled about’ with this kind of facilitation. (Said by Derrick.) My interpretation: she has knowledge and skills in facilitating conversation.
2. Leslie (is effective because she) had made a plan for what was going to happen each day. (Also said by Derrick.) It wasn’t clear to me how structured he imagined her plan to be.
3. Leslie is ‘on-the-spot’ genuine and listened closely to what they said. (Said by Nina.) When asked what it would look like to be ‘not-genuine,’ Nina said something that I interpreted as (if Leslie were not genuine,) “she would have reinterpreted the statements we said to be more like what she was thinking, rather than what we were thinking.”
4. Leslie (is effective because she) is working with people who already know about forces and energy. (Said by Don.) She didn’t have to teach them about forces or energy. I’m going to post video of this, because I found it to be particularly interesting. The feeling I got was that Don felt that there were no ‘fallacies’ to correct, so Leslie was sort of ‘helping them to decide on words,’ rather than teaching force and energy. (I may be reading too much into what he said – let me know what you think when you watch the video!)
5. Leslie creates an environment in which it is easy to interact. (Said by Bruce.)

Below is the particularly interesting contribution by Don. (This episode is named E2 110817 Don's expectations and is at 1.42.19 in the original file E2 110817 1333 L Mic 2.)

I said here that I wondered whether each teacher’s own instructional style affected the way that they would characterize Leslie’s, Stamatis’, and Costas’ instructional styles. This episode brought up a number of questions for me. First, I wondered whether Don thinks that if Leslie writes something on the board (or if the class ‘votes’ on a ‘law’ and Leslie writes it down), it is correct (or in agreement with the scientific consensus) -- or that she thinks it is correct. It also sounds to me (from this single exchange) like he would not be comfortable letting his 'novice' learners walk down a path that was ‘incorrect’ or contained ‘fallacies’ (do you all agree with this synopsis?). So…is Don a teacher who values ‘getting to the scientifically-accepted answer,’ and, if so (or even if not), how is his own instructional style reflected in his assessment of Leslie’s interaction with the class?

Questions, questions, questions…. :)

Jim's Reflection on Being in Energy 2

Yesterday morning, there was some deep conversation going on at "my" table in Energy 2. At some point, Leslie and Stamatis had joined Don, Bruce, Derrick, and Jim, and Stamatis had prompted the discussion about the different kinds of stories (energy, force) that they had been talking about over the past couple days. All of a sudden, Jim offered some reflective thoughts on his experience in Energy 2, and the past couple days in particular. Here's the video (Episode name "E2 110817 0823 L Mic 1 - Jim's Purpose of Being Here.mov;" 1:53:35 into "E2 110817 0823 L Mic 1.mp4").

Jim: This... For me, this has been a productive conversation, like, going right down to the subatomic [inaudible]. It also was a bit confusing, switching gears between models and... I guess my purpose for coming here was to improve my skills in teaching concepts to my students, starting with the most basic and right here, inter- interacting forces and energy is something that you don't always [inaudible], and you don't always do in school. Right? Especially at the middle school introductory level, which I think is great. Uhm... Once we have a good conversation [inaudible] then, fine, I like going everywhere, we can go subatomic [inaudible]. It's been a good conversation for me. But, the past couple days have been more productive because I've had to actually think, yeah? Deeper than just the conceptual association with energy.

Why did I choose to share this clip? Well, first of all, I think that Leslie and Stamatis will find value in this statement (OK, they were sitting at the table but maybe they can't remember). Also, this is in general good advertisement for E2, I guess ;-)

But then, there's one statement that really caught my attention: "The past couple days have been more productive because I've had to actually think." And I think he means that he had to think deeper about things. His understanding was challenged. I feel exactly the same way. I thought I knew quite some stuff about forces and energy, being a physicist and all. Turns out, I actually don't. As soon as I am forced to explain a mechanism, I'm stuck. What do forces have to do with energy? Uhm... Nobody ever taught me that!

I like that he thinks that the past days have been productive for him because his thinking was challenged.

E2 Teachers’ Characterization of Interactions with Stamatis

Since I spent a bunch of time watching an interaction between Stamatis and a group (see posts 1-4 here, here, here, and here), and given the host of questions that were initiated by my thinking about that (see reflections here), I think I’ve become particularly sensitive to how teachers might themselves characterize the instructional styles of Leslie, Stamatis, and Costas. My ears totally perk up when the teachers spontaneously say something to or about an instructor and what they are doing or did. So…below are a few episodes from Wednesday morning in which a group (consisting of John, Nina, Christina, and Rebecca) commented on Stamatis’ behavior or on something he had said.

To put things into context: Wednesday morning began with Leslie prompting the teachers to reflect on the previous day's activities and to make (individually) two separate lists: one that was comprised of “new ideas/theories/facts/possibly-true-statements we learned about F and E," and a second list that was composed of "statements we're trying out...possibly onto something about F and E.” After several minutes, the teachers split into two groups, and each group was instructed to come up with two whiteboards, one for each of the lists.

The group that I was observing had written a few statements on their boards (e.g., “gravity transforms energy”) and was negotiating a statement about energy transfer being related to motion. They spent a while talking about whether energy transfer results from motion, or whether motion results in an energy transfer (“did the chicken or the egg come first?”) and then began talking about contact forces (do they always transfer energy?). Here’s the first episode (named E2 110817 SV reflection 1 on the server; starts at 59.19 in E2 110817 0841 R Mic 2):




Something that stuck out to me about this episode was that Stamatis sort of flitted about for a while (maybe this is why Nina says he’s dying to say something), sat down, asked a question, and then left almost immediately. (Which made me wonder whether the question was something he wanted them to answer for him…or he just wanted them to answer for themselves.) But what I’m most curious about is whether Nina’s statement says anything about what she thinks of Stamatis’ instructional style – does she get the feeling that he is bursting to say something regularly? I’m not sure.

The second clip is from about 25 minutes later. In the meantime, the group has continued to discuss whether the motion comes first, then the energy transfer, or vice versa. Then they begin to discuss where/if the word ‘contact’ should be used to modify their statement, to something like: “If contact forces result in motion, there is a transfer of energy.” Then Nina reflects on something Stamatis had said to them earlier. Take a look. (This movie is entitled E2 110817 SV reflection 2 and starts at 1.26.11 in the original file E2 110817 0841 R Mic 2.)



I think I’m coming to see one of the hallmarks of Stamatis’ “instructional style” as checking for consistency: asking oneself whether the idea/whatever being proposed works for something else. Nina summarizes this as something like “making statements that are absolutely true” and values that about his question. Interestingly, she goes on to ask herself whether what they just came up with is always true --- whether it works with another example from the day before. I wondered whether she was mimicking the way that he interacts with them, or whether this is more something that she does regularly. I'll have to watch her more closely!

Can you see me now? Good.

So, I always get pretty excited when I’m listening to a conversation and I hear a lot of sentences that end sounding incomplete with a few seconds of silence: “If it’s like this – " Chances are, when I look up from typing, I catch the end of the stroke of some sweeping drawing in the air.

Check this out as an example:

@ 00:21 Pattie (sitting in the middle on the right) says “. . . but this one. . .”

After you see her gesture, you can tell that she is referring to something that happens in the stretching of the rubber band by ‘this one.’

I try not to stare with my mouth gaping open at my table for extended periods of time because I don’t want the teachers to feel watched. But, wow, trying not to watch too much can be a serious challenge. The moments when I lose track of what people are saying because I’m looking at my computer screen really drive home to me the universal presence and importance of nonverbal modes of communication. I can’t understand what people are saying much of the time without watching their gestures!

Being a videographer and taking field notes kind of puts you in a unique place to notice how unnatural it is to listen to a face-face conversation between two or more people when you can’t see their hands.

Gesture plays an important role for not just speakers, but listeners, too. When listeners can see iconic gestures (in addition to speech) they can answer questions more accurately about what happened in a cartoon. Here’s a paper about that:

http://jls.sagepub.com/content/18/4/438.full.pdf+html

(Beattie and Shovelton 1999)

And, are these sentences finished by gestures more common when people are working out physics explanations for the first time? Is it unique when you’re talking about new stuff? Without the “right” words (feature-talk) are people more likely to fill in part of the story with their hands?

Decomposing an interaction: Part 5

This is the fifth and final post in my ‘thinking about the 70-minute interaction’ series. (In truth, I think this is more a reflection of what I’ve been thinking about for the past week --- and watching this interaction has been a part of it.)

First, I feel like one of the overarching goals of a number of recent blog posts has been (at least in part) to characterize the ‘instructional styles’ of Leslie, Stamatis, and Costas. Do each of these instructors care more about the process, the concepts (or, perhaps more accurately, reaching consensus with the scientific community), or both? How does each instructor make instructional decisions, including when they decide to join a group and when they decide to speak? What do they most value/most desperately want to see happen in their classrooms (what would a good day look like), both implicitly (or subconsciously) and explicitly? (And how do we figure that out by watching video?)

I’ve also started to wonder what the instructional styles of each of the teachers in E2 is – are they more like Stamatis, more like Leslie, or more like Costas (or something else entirely)? To what extent does what they (the teachers in E2) value interact with and affect their interactions with Leslie, Stamatis, and Costas? (For example, what would happen in an interaction between a teacher who valued ‘getting to the scientifically-accepted answer’ and an instructor who mainly valued process?) Does a mismatch of instructional values lead to frustration or to open-mindedness --- or to more or less learning?

Finally, how would each teacher characterize the instructional styles of Leslie, Stamatis, and Costas --- and would their characterization depend on their own instructional styles? (Do they think one is a ‘good’ teacher if there is a match between their own instructional style and the instructional style of LA, SV, or CC?) And to what extent does this conscious or subconscious characterization (if at all) affect a teacher’s interaction with an instructor? (I’ve flagged a few episodes throughout the last few days where I heard a teacher making statements about a particular instructor’s style. I now want to go back and clip those!)

So I guess my reflections are actually a bunch of open questions. :)

Decomposing an interaction: Part 4

This is the fourth of five blog posts about the 70-minute interaction between Stamatis and group 1 (see the first three here, here, and here). The episode below is the group interaction that inspired me to look at the Stamatis-group_1 interaction in the first place.

To put things into context: the 70-minute interaction happened Thursday morning, and this episode occurred in the afternoon. Earlier in the afternoon, Rachel gave her ‘ontologies’ talk, in which she quoted Feynman as saying something to the effect of, “Energy is this magical thing for which the total number of units never changes, no matter the process.” (The gist of the statement, to me, is that we don’t know why this happens, we just know that it does.) This apparently resonated with Don and Tim, who called it “liberating.”

After a short break, the group was brought back together (minus Rachel), and Leslie (flying solo, no Stamatis present this afternoon) asked the group made up of Derrick, Bruce, Don, Tim, and Jim to share what they had come up with in the morning (i.e., during their interaction with Stamats). (Recall that the ‘objective’ of the morning was to answer the question, “Why?,” with respect to energy transfers and transformations.)

After some (seemingly unrelated) conversation about energy flowing “from high to low” (or from high to low energy density), the group (now including Leslie) talk some about forces. However, they did not seem to be addressing the original question (“explain why/how transfers and transformations happen”), and thus Leslie asks, “What is the causal story?” This is where the video starts -- note that the video is split into two parts. (Episodes are named 'fishing for misconceptions part 1a' and 'fishing for misconceptions part 2a.')

I was originally struck by their strong statements, that they felt they were “trying to over classify things,” that Stamatis had “wanted them to go someplace they weren’t able to go” or that he was “fishing for misconceptions.” I was also struck by their apparent devaluation of the question in the first place (and Nina’s contrasting valuing of the question). (As a side note, I’m still learning about Rogers, but from my naïve perspective, Leslie was behaving quite Rogerian-ly :)…)

I find this video particularly interesting after observing the entire morning interaction, because I didn’t get the feeling that Stamatis was ‘fishing for misconceptions,’ so I wonder why they thought so. [There was only one point at which I can confidently identify a moment where Stamatis may have been ‘unseating a misconception’ (although that’s not what I’d call it). (That moment would be when the group said that energy moves from high to low energy, and Stamatis gave an example in which he poured a small cup of coffee in a large body of water and asked which direction the energy would flow.)] And I find it interesting (but not necessarily surprising) that they were aware enough of themselves to articulate that they didn’t get where Stamatis wanted them to go.

And Yet Another Piece to our Puzzle..... :)

[00:00:04.29] Derrick: I guess I don't know where we're going

[00:00:10.17] Derrick: Imagine a system like an "elevator"

[00:00:40.08] Derrick: But you're asking me how it gets from this mass to that mass...

[00:00:42.11] Costas: Or the other way around!

[00:00:47.04] Derrick: I don't know if we're going to the point of talking about gravitational fields and electric fields along the line....and how those electric fields get distorted...i feel like that is not where you're going...maybe something similar?

[00:01:09.27] Costas: Whether you guys think that the question "how is the energy transferred?" Is that a....

Derrick: That's an interesting question!

Costas: Is that a relevant question...a valid question?

[00:01:28.11] Derrick: it seems meaningful to me!

[00:01:31.14] John: Just to get an idea out there...it's going through the rope

[00:01:33.25] Costas: so let's think about what the rope is doing!...

what i'm hearing you say is that if the rope was not there then there would be no way of connecting this thing to this thing...

[00:01:47.21] Derrick: Oh, some sort of connection between two parts of the system

[00:01:51.08] Costas: Let's just take one of the two masses...i think it's easier to think of the one that's moving up...if i think about this, and I think about the rope that is connected to the part...what is the role of the rope...what does this mass feel?

[00:02:12.16] John: it's pulling that mass up...

Derrick: well you have balanced force because it's not accelerating; gravitational force is trying to pull it down and the rope is pulling it up

[00:02:24.09] Costas: One strategy that I try in my head to force on myself everytime, and I always find it useful when thinking about physics, is to make sure that I know what system I am thinking about at any one time, and also make sure that I know what terms I am using to analyze the system, so the reason i'm saying this is because those are important principles to me! I think we find it useful to just take a couple of minutes to agree on what we mean by the term force.

So what I heard you say was that...we have the rope connecting, and if i think about this mass, the rope is pulling it, and you said there are balanced forces there because this mass is not accelerating. I am asking two questions: what are the forces that are balancing out? and what do we mean by force?

[00:03:42.11]Derrick: laughing, I can go with what I learn: tension force is balancing out with gravitational force

Costas: and what do we mean by force?

John: well I would say a force is a... push or pull over a distance or something

Derrick and Costas: well it doesn't have to be over a distance...

John: just a push or a pull, you're right

Costas: are we agreed on this ? i like this! a force is a push or a pull...

Here is a clip of Costas interacting with Derrick and John. This clip was from the morning of the Energy 2 class this past Friday (when Stamatis was not in class).

I am still in the process of digesting the flurry of blog posts that were just posted by Amy and Rachel concerning the group interactions involving Stomatis and Leslie, but the idea of "where do the conversations "actually" start and why" has been circulating my train of thought. In this particular clip of Costas' group interaction, I felt like the moment which "sparked" discussion stemmed from Costas asking Derrick and John whether they felt that the question "how is energy transferred?" to be both "relevant" and "valid". I found it particularly interesting that rather than ask Derrick and John to answer the actual question, Costas found it necessary to first ask whether they each valued that question, seeking affirmation that the question was actually a genuine point of interest to the entire group.

I will post more about this clip as soon as more of my thoughts "settle"!