Students reflective learning practices in problem solving

Project heads

Prof. Edit Yerushalmi, Department of science teaching, Weizmann Institute of Science,

Prof. Chandralekha Singh, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburg, USA

Dr. Rafi Safadi, The Arabic college for education in Israel, Haifa

Postdocs and students

Dr. Elisheva Cohen, Post-doctoral fellow, Currently Lecturer at David Yellin College, Jerusalem; MECHINA, the Hebrew

University of Jerusalem; and MY College, Or-Yehuda

Mr. Andrew Mason, Ph.D. Student (Currently Assistant Professor at University of central Arkansas, USA

Summary

In this project students’ capacity to reflect and learn from erroneous solutions to a problem is investigated in the common context where students are provided with worked-out examples to physics problems which they then compare to their own attempts to solve these problems. This study was carried out in a college in the US and in Arab-Israeli high schools, in the context of algebra- based introductory courses in mechanics. The results highlight students’ poor ability to acknowledge conflicts between scientific and naive interpretations of the physics principles underlying the solutions.

Related Articles

  1. Yerushalmi, E., Cohen, E., Mason, A., & Singh, C., (2012), What do students do when asked to diagnose their mistakes? Does it help them? I: An atypical quiz context, Phys Rev – ST PER 8, 020109. doi:10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.8.020109.
  2. Yerushalmi, E., Cohen, E., Mason, A. & Singh, C., (2012), What do students do when asked to diagnose their mistakes? And does it help them? II. A more typical quiz context, accepted for publication, Phys Rev – ST PER 8, 020110, doi:10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.8.020110.
  3. Safadi. R., & Yerushalmi, E., (2013), Students’ Self-Diagnosis Using Worked-Out Examples, Creative Education .4(3), 205-216. doi:10.4236/ce.2013.43031