Students’ perspectives on computational challenges in physics class

High school science classrooms across the United States are answering calls to make computation a part of science learning. The problem is that there is little known about the barriers to learning that computation might bring to a science classroom or about how to help students overcome these challenges. This case study explores these challenges from the perspectives of students in a high school physics classroom with a newly revamped, computation-integrated curriculum. Focusing mainly on interviews to center the perspectives of students, we found that computation is a double-edged sword: It can make science learning more authentic for students who are familiar with it, but it can also generate frustration and an aversion towards physics for students who are not.

Figure 1

Starter code and snapshot of the dynamic visualization for Mr. Buford’s converging lens activity. Lines 4–10 of the code initialize the lens, $x$ axis, and light particles. Lines 12–16 initialize the focal points, give the particles a velocity, and define a time step for each frame of the animation. Lines 18–24 iteratively move the particles using their velocity and the time step. The snapshot of the visualization shows that the particles pass through the lens in a straight line, indicating that the program does not fully model the physics properly.

Figure 2

Diagram of light particles passing through a converging lens. This is similar to the diagram Mr. Buford drew on the whiteboard during his explanation of the activity. Students learned about how light travels through a converging lens during a previous class period.