Monday, August 6, 2007 - 3:40 PMOOS 4-7: Telling is not enough: Modeling and the force concept inventory
H. Wells Wulsin, Stanford
The Force Concept Inventory measures students’ conceptual understanding of forces and motion. The FCI has shown that even after a year-long physics course, many students still have not accepted the basic principles of Newtonian dynamics. This fact has motivated many physics educators to adopt a modeling approach to teaching physics, in which students construct mental models about physical laws by performing guided investigations. I will present the FCI results from my own modeling-based high school physics class and compare them to larger studies. Although modeling is most commonly used in physical science classrooms, I will suggest some elements of the method which may be incorporated into life science teaching.