61 citations · 247 across the 16 of their papers we have counts for
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The role physics can play in a multi-disciplinary curriculum for non-physics scientists and engineers
Edward F. Redish, Vashti Sawtelle, Chandra Turpen
At many physics departments a significant fraction of teaching is in support of engineers and scientists in other majors. These service courses are thus an automatic crucible of in…
Using disciplinary perspectives to refine conceptions of the "real world"
Abhilash Nair, Paul Irving, Vashti Sawtelle
It has been reported that students often leave the introductory physics classroom believing that physics is less connected to the real world than when they entered. In this paper w…
Operationalizing relevance in physics education: using a systems view to expand our conception of making physics relevant
Abhilash Nair, Vashti Sawtelle
A common hope of many physics educators and researchers is that students leave the course with a stronger sense that physics is relevant to them than when they entered the course.…
An uncommon case of relevance through everyday experiences
Abhilash Nair, Vashti Sawtelle
Physics education research has probed for the relevance of physics in students' everyday lives. Attitudinal and epistemological surveys have asked students if they think of or use…
Exploring Mindset's Applicability to Students' Experiences with Challenge in Transformed College Physics Courses
Angela Little, Bridget Humphrey, Abigail Green +2
The mindset literature is a longstanding area of psychological research focused on beliefs about intelligence, response to challenge, and goals for learning (Dweck, 2000). However,…
What counts in laboratories: toward a practice-based identity survey
Kelsey Funkhouser, Marcos D. Caballero, Paul W. Irving +1
An essential step in the process of developing a physics identity is the opportunity to engage in authentic physics practices - an ideal place to gain these experiences is physics…
Leveraging a Relationship with Biology to Expand a Relationship with Physics
Vashti Sawtelle, Chandra Turpen
This work examines how experiences in one disciplinary domain (biology) can impact the relationship a student builds with another domain (physics). We present a model for disciplin…
Resource Letter TTSM-1: Teaching thermodynamics and statistical mechanics in introductory physics, chemistry, and biology
Benjamin W. Dreyfus, Benjamin D. Geller, David E. Meltzer +1
This Resource Letter draws on discipline-based education research from physics, chemistry, and biology to collect literature on the teaching of thermodynamics and statistical mecha…
A Vision of Interdisciplinary Education: Students' Reasoning about "High-Energy Bonds" and ATP
Benjamin W. Dreyfus, Vashti Sawtelle, Chandra Turpen +2
As interdisciplinary courses are developed, instructors and researchers have to grapple with questions of how students should make connections across disciplines. We explore the is…
Ontological metaphors for negative energy in an interdisciplinary context
Benjamin W. Dreyfus, Benjamin D. Geller, Julia Gouvea +3
Teaching about energy in interdisciplinary settings that emphasize coherence among physics, chemistry, and biology leads to a more central role for chemical bond energy. We argue t…
Entropy and spontaneity in an introductory physics course for life science students
Benjamin D. Geller, Benjamin W. Dreyfus, Julia Gouvea +3
In an Introductory Physics for Life Science (IPLS) course that leverages authentic biological examples, student ideas about entropy as "disorder" or "chaos" come into contact with…
Chemical energy in an introductory physics course for the life sciences
Benjamin W. Dreyfus, Julia Gouvea, Benjamin D. Geller +3
Energy is a complex idea that cuts across scientific disciplines. For life science students, an approach to energy that incorporates chemical bonds and chemical reactions is better…
Negative Energy: Why Interdisciplinary Physics Requires Multiple Ontologies
Benjamin W. Dreyfus, Benjamin D. Geller, Julia Gouvea +3
Much recent work in physics education research has focused on ontological metaphors for energy, particularly the substance ontology and its pedagogical affordances. The concept of…
Students' Interdisciplinary Reasoning about "High-Energy Bonds" and ATP
Benjamin W. Dreyfus, Benjamin D. Geller, Vashti Sawtelle +3
Students' sometimes contradictory ideas about ATP (adenosine triphosphate) and the nature of chemical bonds have been studied in the biology and chemistry education literatures, bu…
Investigating Student Communities with Network Analysis of Interactions in a Physics Learning Center
Eric Brewe, Laird H. Kramer, Vashti Sawtelle
Developing a sense of community among students is one of the three pillars of an overall reform effort to increase participation in physics, and the sciences more broadly, at Flori…
Impacts of real-time data collection on introductory algebra-based physics
Eric Brewe, Vashti Sawtelle, Priscilla Pamela
Including real-time data collection technology is a common practice to upgrade physics labs, and the assumption is such technology improves student learning, yet little has been do…