How to help students learn: An investigation of how in- and pre-service physics teachers respond to students’ explanations

Research carried out through the last 20 years gave us undeniable evidence that to learn anything we need to be active participants, not passive observers. One of the important aspects of learning physics is constructing explanations of physical phenomena. To support and guide students toward constructing their explanations, teachers need to be attentive and responsive to students’ explanations. To learn how physics teachers interpret and respond to students’ explanations we investigated pre- and in-service physics teachers’ responses to students’ written explanations of their answers to a complex physics problem. The survey administered to the participants included the problem statement and four authentic student explanations. The participants were asked to identify each student’s strengths and weaknesses and to provide a response to that student. We found that while the participants were successful in identifying productive and problematic aspects of student reasoning, they rarely built on student reasoning when responding to the students, mostly focusing on addressing problematic aspects. The paper discusses why this finding is important for physics teacher preparation programs and professional development programs.

Figure 1

The problem students were solving (published in Ref. [76]). The correct answer choice is (b).

Figure 2

The distribution of the scores for each of the codes for all participants’ responses to all incorrect explanations combined.

Figure 3

The distribution of the scores for each of the codes for all participants’ responses to the correct explanation.

Figure 4

The distribution of the scores for interpreting productive (a) and problematic (b) reasoning for students’ incorrect explanations combined. Statistical significance of the differences is analyzed in Appendix pp3.

Figure 5

The distribution of the scores for providing descriptive feedback (a) and engaging students in metacognition (b) for students’ incorrect explanations combined. Statistical significance of the differences is analyzed in Appendix pp3.

Figure 6

The distribution of the scores for building on productive (a) and addressing problematic elements (b) for students’ incorrect explanations combined. Statistical significance of the differences is analyzed in Appendix pp3.

Figure 7

The distribution of the scores for interpreting productive (a) and problematic (b) reasoning for the student’s correct explanation.

Figure 8

The distribution of the scores for providing descriptive feedback (a) and engaging students in metacognition (b) for the student’s correct explanation.

Figure 9

The distribution of the scores for building on productive (a) and addressing problematic elements (b) for the student’s correct explanation. Statistical significance of the differences is analyzed in Appendix pp3.

Figure 10

All productive and problematic ideas experts identified in the student’s explanation of answer (a) and the analysis of the experts’ response to the student.

Figure 11

All productive and problematic ideas experts identified in the student’s incorrect explanation of answer (b) and the analysis of the experts’ response to the student.

Figure 12

All productive and problematic ideas experts identified in the student’s correct explanation of answer (b) and the analysis of the experts’ response to the student.

Figure 13

All productive and problematic ideas experts identified in the student’s explanation of answer (c) and the analysis of the experts’ response to the student.