Lincoln, Yvonna, and Egon Guba, "Postpositivism and the Naturalist Paradigm," pp. 14-46 in Yvonna Lincoln and Egon Guba, Naturalistic Inquiry . Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1985.*

A theoretical formalism to calculate the single crystal elastic constants for orthorhombic crystals from first principle calculations is described. This is applied for TiSi2 and we calculate the elastic constants using a full potential linear muffin-tin orbital method using the local density approximation (LDA) and generalized gradient approximation (GGA). The calculated values compare favorably with recent experimental results. An expression to calculate the bulk modulus along crystallographic axes of single crystals, using elastic constants, has been derived. From this the calculated linear bulk moduli are found to be in good agreement with the experiments. The shear modulus, Young’s modulus, and Poisson’s ratio for ideal polycrystalline TiSi2 are also calculated and compared with corresponding experimental values. The directional bulk modulus and the Young’s modulus for single crystal TiSi2 are estimated from the elastic constants obtained from LDA as well as GGA calculations and are compared with the ...

Density functional theory for calculation of elastic properties of orthorhombic crystals: Application to TiSi2

The purpose of this Resource Letter is to provide an overview of research on the learning and teaching of physics. The references have been selected to meet the needs of two groups of physicists engaged in physics education. The first is the growing number whose field of scholarly inquiry is (or might become) physics education research. The second is the much larger community of physics instructors whose primary interest is in using the results from research as a guide for improving instruction.

Resource Letter: PER-1: Physics Education Research

With good reason, physics education research has focused almost exclusively on student difficulties and misconceptions. This work has been productive for curriculum development as well as in motivating the physics teaching community to examine and reconsider methods and assumptions, but it is limited in what it can tell us about student knowledge and learning. This article reviews perspectives on student resources for learning, with an emphasis on the practical benefits to be gained for instruction.

Student resources for learning introductory physics

information in analogical transfer, Psychol. Bull. 115, 381 (1994). [134] S. Y. Lin and C. Singh, Using isomorphic problems to learn introductory physics, Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 7, 020104 (2011). [135] D. Hammer, A. Elby, R. Scherr, and E. F. Redish, in Transfer of Learning from a Modern Multidisciplinary Perspective, edited by J. Mestre (Information Age Publishing, Greenwich, CT, 2005), pp. 89–119. [136] J. Tuminaro, A cognitive framework for analyzing and describing introductory students use and understanding of mathematics in physics, Ph.D. thesis, University of Maryland, 2004 (unpublished). [137] J. S. Brown, A. Collins, and P. Duguid, Situated cognition and the culture of learning, Educ. Res. 18, 32 (1989). [138] A. Mason and C. Singh, Revisiting categorization, in Proceedings of the 2009 National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST) Annual Meeting (Garden Grove, CA, 2009) Symposium S2.2, pp. 3–21. [139] F. Mateycik, D. Jonassen, and N. S. Rebello, Using Similarity Rating Tasks to Assess Case Reuse in Problem Solving, Proceedings of the Physics Education Research Conference (Ann Arbor, MI, 2010).[AIP Conference Proceedings 1179, 201, (2009)]. [140] S. F. Wolf, D. P. Dougherty, and G. Kortemeyer, Empirical approach to interpreting card-sorting data, Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 8, 010124 (2012). [141] A. Carmichael, A. Larson, E. Gire, L. Loschky, and N. S. Rebello, How does visual attention differ between experts and novices on physics problems?, AIP Conf. Proc. 1289, 93 (2010). [142] D. Rosengrant, A. Van Heuvelen, and E. Etkina, Do students use and understand free-body diagrams?, Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 5, 010108 (2009). [143] A. D. Smith, J. P. Mestre, and B. H. Ross, Eye gaze patterns as students study worked out examples in mechanics, Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 6, 020118 (2010). [144] T. de Jong and M. G. M. Ferguson-Hessler, Cognitive structures of good and poor novice problem solvers in physics, J. Educ. Psychol. 78, 279 (1986). [145] J. L. Docktor, J. P. Mestre, and B. H. Ross, Impact of a short intervention on novices’ categorization criteria, Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 8, 020102 (2012). [146] S. F. Wolf, D. P. Dougherty, and G. Kortemeyer, Rigging the deck: Selecting good problems for expert-novice card-sorting experiments, Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 8, 020116 (2012). [147] M. Finegold and R. Mass, Differences in the process of solving physics problems between good problem solvers and poor problem solvers, Res. Sci. Technol. Educ. 3, 59 (1985). [148] L. N. Walsh, R. G. Howard, and B. Bowe, Phenomenographic study of students’ problem solving approaches in SYNTHESIS OF DISCIPLINE-BASED ... PHYS. REV. ST PHYS. EDUC. RES 10, 020119 (2014)

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Synthesis of Discipline-Based Education Research in Physics.

Conceptual knowledge is only one aspect of a good knowledge structure: how and when knowledge is activated and used are also important. We explore knowledge organization in the context of the resources model of student thinking via observations of student problem-solving behavior on a mechanics task that integrates the concepts of force, motion, and energy. We document that both introductory and advanced students may have knowledge structures with local coherences that may inhibit their access to additional useful knowledge. These results suggest that instructors and researchers need to pay increased attention to how and when students use what they know as well as to what they know.

Knowledge organization and activation in physics problem solving

Performance on multiple-choice diagnostics and complementary exam problems

Using the context of physics problem-solving to evaluate the coherence of student knowledge

Personal Response Systems or clickers have been used for a number of years to help create active learning environments in the lecture classroom. Researchers have shown that the use of clickers stimulate student‐student and student‐lecturer interaction. In addition, students value the use of clickers and feel that these devices contribute to their understanding. Even though clickers have been used for quite some time, there are relatively few research studies focusing on how student knowledge is enhanced through the use of clickers. To contribute to this body of research, we compared student responses on exam questions to similar or identical clicker questions that were presented during lecture. The analysis of the responses to both clicker and exam questions show how individual student knowledge evolves during instruction. Although there is evidence of improvement during lecture, many students were unable to respond correctly when the questions were posed on the exam, despite the similarity in the questions.

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Examining the Effectiveness of Clickers on Promoting Learning by Tracking the Evolution of Student Responses

A key component to the success of the Learning Assistant (LA) Model is the relationship that forms between LAs and faculty members. These relationships can enhance the effectiveness of the model by leveraging the expertise of the LAs and placing LAs in leadership roles where they can co-think and codesign activities and lessons with faculty, as well as provide insights to faculty about the students in the class and the learning environment. Interviews with LAs and faculty members, in addition to video from weekly preparation sessions, illustrate the different types of partnerships that can evolve between LAs and faculty and help us understand the roles different factors play in these partnerships. We contrast three different types of partnerships between LAs and faculty that exist along a continuum: mentor-mentee, faculty-driven collaboration, and collaborative. This data highlights the importance and the benefits of being attentive to these partnerships in developing a robust and effective LA Program.

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Mel S. Sabella

Papers

Knowledge organization and activation in physics problem solving

Performance on multiple-choice diagnostics and complementary exam problems

Using the context of physics problem-solving to evaluate the coherence of student knowledge

Examining the Effectiveness of Clickers on Promoting Learning by Tracking the Evolution of Student Responses

Leveraging the expertise of the urban STEM student in developing an effective LA Program: LA and Instructor Partnerships