Teaching and Assessing Decision-Making Across the Physics Curriculum

Abstract

Problem solving is prevalent in all levels of physics and receives considerable attention in physics education research. This dissertation focuses on investigations of problem-solving in understudied areas of the physics curriculum: courses for non-STEM majors and graduate-level courses. The first study describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of laboratory activities for non-science majors which scaffolded experimental design and decision-making over a semester. Students exhibited shifts toward more expert-like views of experimental physics and improved capabilities make experimental decisions. The activities designed in this study drew on existing frameworks in the PER community, but no such curricular frameworks exist at the graduate level. Thus, the next study used semi-structured interviews and textual analysis to identify physics instructors’ expectations for problem-solving in graduate coursework, as well as how problem-solving is implemented and assessed in practice. Instructors expected far more problem-solving skills than were practiced in coursework. The final study discusses the development of an assessment to measure a broader range of problem-solving skills in quantum mechanics and describes evidence for the face validity of the assessment. Together, these chapters expand our understanding of problem-solving in classrooms and build the groundwork for future interventions.