Implementing Reflective Writing in Combination with Labatorials
Abstract
Students are often not familiar with the language of science and as a result they have great difficulty understanding scientific texts. Students tend to memorize the materials that they see in the textbook without thinking about their meaning, because they believe that language and words hold the knowledge and they need to use the same words and terms in order to show their understanding. Such students who think that knowledge in science is a body of settled facts that comes from authority take a passive role in learning and become a receiver of knowledge, while those who try to make sense of the science language and construct their own understanding by questioning the knowledge presented to them are more likely to develop reasoning and critical thinking skills.
The hermeneutical approach that is the basis of “Reflective Writing” encourages students to question what is presented to them and moves them from receiving knowledge to constructing their own understanding. Reflective writing was used in combination with a new style of introductory physics labs called 'Labatorials' at Mount Royal University (MRU) and the impact of these pedagogical tools on student learning, and in particular on how students learn, was investigated and analyzed in this study. Interviews with students who completed the reflective writing assignments in the introductory physics labatorials as well as an analysis of students’ reflective writing assignments helped us find key aspects that make the reflective writing activity useful to the students. Interviews were also used to find out if Labatorials are helpful to the students.
The disciplined-focused epistemological beliefs questionnaire (DFEBQ) developed by Hofer (2000) was used in this project to find out whether the combinations of reflective writing and labatorials can change students’ epistemology.
With these related projects, we establish three main results. First, we identified the main aspects that make reflective writing an effective learning activity in introductory physics courses. Second, we have also made progress in characterizing the positive and negative aspects of labatorials. Third, we have analyzed the possible changes that the combination of reflective writing and labatorials can have on students’ beliefs about knowledge and learning.
Description
Keywords
Physics
Citation
Sobhanzadeh, M. (2015). Implementing Reflective Writing in Combination with Labatorials (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/26471