TY - JOUR
T1 - Physicality, modeling, and agency in a computational physics class
AU - Phillips, A. M.
AU - Gouvea, E. J.
AU - Gravel, B. E.
AU - Beachemin, P. H.
AU - Atherton, T. J.
N1 - Funding Information:
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. DMR 1654283 and No. DRL 1742369 and Research Corporation for Science Advancement (postdoctoral fellowship to AMP with sponsor TJA.)
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.
PY - 2023/3/30
Y1 - 2023/3/30
N2 - Computation is intertwined with essentially all aspects of physics research and is invaluable for physicists' careers. Despite its disciplinary importance, integration of computation into physics education remains a challenge and, moreover, has tended to be constructed narrowly as a route to solving physics problems. Here, we broaden Physics Education Research's conception of computation by constructing a metamodel - a model of modeling - incorporating insights on computational modeling from the philosophy of science and prior work. The metamodel is formulated in terms of practices, things physicists do, and how these inform one another. We operationalize this metamodel in an educational environment that incorporates making, the creation of shared physical and digital artifacts, intended to promote students' agency, creativity, and self-expression alongside doing physics. We present a content analysis of student work from initial implementations of this approach to illustrate the very complex epistemic maneuvers students make as they engaged in computational modeling. We demonstrate how our metamodel can be used to understand student practices and conclude with implications of the metamodel for instruction and future research.
AB - Computation is intertwined with essentially all aspects of physics research and is invaluable for physicists' careers. Despite its disciplinary importance, integration of computation into physics education remains a challenge and, moreover, has tended to be constructed narrowly as a route to solving physics problems. Here, we broaden Physics Education Research's conception of computation by constructing a metamodel - a model of modeling - incorporating insights on computational modeling from the philosophy of science and prior work. The metamodel is formulated in terms of practices, things physicists do, and how these inform one another. We operationalize this metamodel in an educational environment that incorporates making, the creation of shared physical and digital artifacts, intended to promote students' agency, creativity, and self-expression alongside doing physics. We present a content analysis of student work from initial implementations of this approach to illustrate the very complex epistemic maneuvers students make as they engaged in computational modeling. We demonstrate how our metamodel can be used to understand student practices and conclude with implications of the metamodel for instruction and future research.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85153848675&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.19.010121
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.19.010121
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85153848675
SN - 2469-9896
VL - 19
JO - Physical Review Physics Education Research
JF - Physical Review Physics Education Research
IS - 1
M1 - 010121
ER -