Altering the Misinterpretations of Newton’s Third Law Through Inquiryand Hands On DiscoveryDebora Shafer, Department of Physics, State University of New York at Buffalo: Buffalo State College, 1300 Elmwood Ave. Buffalo NY 14222 [email protected]:This paper shows how Special Education Students were reformed in their thinking about Newtonian force concepts. The students were tested for understanding, and then interviewed individually to understand why they choose their answers. From the interviews the students were evaluated as to their reasoning levels, and through Inquiry Based Lessons along with Hands-on discovery activities the students’ miss-conceptions were re-formulated into a deeper cognitive understanding of Newtonian Force concepts, specifically Newton’s Third Law. According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1989) students should be conceptualizing science in terms of connected and interrelated themes which are linked acrossdisciplines.( McCarthy, 2004 ) The importance of relating the physical world to students’ personal experience in showing the interconnection to real time can help promote scientific literacy across the board. In short, the teacher needs to find out what the student knows and teach accordingly. With the introduction of hands-on learning and animation, even the most challenged students can understand concepts relating to real world applications. Research states that activity based instruction may be more appropriate than the traditional textbook approach forstudents with unique learning need (McCarthy, 2004). Acknowledgements:This manuscript was prepared as part of requirements for PHY690: Master's Project at SUNY Buffalo State College,under the direction of Dr. Dan MacIsaac, Prof. Joe Zawicki, and Dr. David Abbott.Thank you also to my peers in Physics Workshops and colleagues along the way that have helped me develop such a broad understanding of the pedagogy that is involved in the teaching of physics.And special thanks to Yianna Fantrazzo for listening to me read for so many years.“Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not the multiplicity and confusion of things.”1- Sir Isaac NewtonIntroductionThere has been a lot of research on inquiry teaching and specifically students working in co-operative learning groups. The basis for inquiry teaching revolves around two elements. The first would be to arrange the environment to facilitate student-centered instruction and next to include sufficient guidance to ensure direction and success in discovering the concepts being taught (Trowbridge, Bybee, & Powell, 2000; Rochelle, 1992; Halloun, 1985). Strategies of inquiry teaching are emphasized in the National Science Education Standards as primary methods of conducting science classes to acquaint students with the scientific method of problemsolving techniques that are used in the field by scientists. The Learning Cycle and Traditional Text have been at the basis of many studies, with the comparison of each individually. The learning cycle method is to teach in three consecutive phases known as exploration, term introduction, and concept application, which is the way people spontaneously learn about life and the world around them (Musheno & Lawson, 1999). While traditional texts, in all content areas, are written with term introduction and vocabulary in the beginning of a chapter followed by examples and exploration of the concepts (Garner, 1991). Text books are often written in such a way that they confuse the student, particularly students with low reading scores (Musheno & Lawson, 1999). This study uses techniques modeled in Physics Teacher Workshops in concruency with refutational text because The U.S. Department ofEducation (1991) states that 90% of instruction time is devoted to textbook use (Mc Carthy, 2004). Science and Math Literacy are critical for many Physics concepts and students with disabilities often have difficulty with language and reading (Cawley, 1990). It is clear why special education students struggle with traditional textbook approaches; that is why this study explores Inquiry based learning with student guided hands-on discovery methods applied to the teaching of Newton’s Third Law concepts to students with varing reasoning levels. Often textbooks do suggest hands-on activities and these should be extended to include inquiry based investigations. By allowing the students to; 1) pose the question of what we are trying to solve, 2) design a way to investigate that question, 3) do the investigation and collect the data, 4) interpret and discuss findings with peers; we promote in the students a motivation to learning science content while at the same time increasing science process skills, manipulitive skills, on-task behavior and self-gratification. Moreover, studies that compare students who receive instruction in discovery and activity-oriented instruction perform better than students in direct instruction or traditional approaches (Mc Carthy, 2004). In inclusion classrooms, where studentswith disabilities received activities-oriented instruction, they demonstrated similar gains in achievment when compared with normal-achieving peers, and performed even better than nondisabled peers who received testbook instruction (Mc Carthy, 2004). One of the goals of the study was to teach the special education students physics concepts without mentioning the word physics. Like a lot of people, just the word physics would cause the students to freeze up. Through discussions with the test group they gave the reasoning, unanimously, that they do not know physics when they just are not clear on what the word physics means. Rather then argue the point, the teacher and aids in the room did not mention the word Physics. The students levels of understanding were varied and upon teaming them up that factor was taken into consideration. Students were grouped based on understanding, reasoning level and social abilities, establishing large differences between high and low scorers in each 2group seemed very effective in our dynamics. The other aspect of the study was in teaching Newton’s Third Law concepts. Using methods from New Physics Teacher Workshops offered at Buffalo State College along with animations and simulations the students were guided through Inquiry based activities to restructure their thinking about forces and how size affects movement.The students were
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