Disciplinary authenticity: Enriching the reforms of introductory physics courses for life-science students
arXiv:1109.4983 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.8.010112
Abstract
Educators and policy-makers have advocated for reform of undergraduate biology education, calling for greater integration of mathematics and physics in the biology curriculum. While these calls reflect the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of biology research, crossing disciplinary boundaries in the classroom carries epistemological challenges for both instructors and students. In this paper we expand on the construct of authenticity to better describe and understand disciplinary practices, in particular to examine those used in physics and biology courses. We then apply these ideas to examine an introductory biology course that incorporates physics and mathematics. We characterize the uses of interdisciplinary tools in this biology course and contrast them with the typical uses of these tools in physics courses. Finally, we examine student responses to the use of mathematics and physics in this course, to better understand the challenges and consequences of using interdisciplinary tools in introductory courses. We link these results to the reform initiatives of introductory physics courses for life-science students.
19 pages
References in corpus (3)
Cited by in corpus (8)
- NEXUS/Physics: An interdisciplinary repurposing of physics for biologists
- Learning Each Others' Ropes: Negotiating interdisciplinary authenticity
- Oersted Lecture 2013: How should we think about how our students think?
- Toward Better Physics Labs for Future Biologists
- Using math in physics: 5. Functional dependence
- Vision and change in introductory physics for the life sciences
- Consideration of learning orientations as an application of achievement goals in evaluating life science majors in introductory physics
- What is interdisciplinarity? Views from students and professors in a non-major intro physics course