Students should develop self-reflection skills and appropriate views about knowledge and learning, both for their own sake and because these skills and views may be related to improvements in conceptual understanding. We explored the latter issue in the context of an introductory physics course for first-year engineering honors students. As part of the course, students submitted weekly reports, in which they reflected on how they learned specific physics content. The reports by 12 students were analyzed for the quality of reflection and some of the epistemological beliefs they exhibited. Students’ conceptual learning gains were measured with standard survey instruments. We found that students with high conceptual gains tend to show reflection on learning that is more articulate and epistemologically sophisticated than students with lower conceptual gains. Some implications for instruction are suggested.
Skip Nav Destination
Article navigation
December 2002
PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCH SECTION|
December 01 2002
College physics students’ epistemological self-reflection and its relationship to conceptual learning
David B. May;
David B. May
Department of Physics, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210
Search for other works by this author on:
Eugenia Etkina
Eugenia Etkina
Graduate School of Education, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901-1183
Search for other works by this author on:
Am. J. Phys. 70, 1249–1258 (2002)
Article history
Received:
April 22 2002
Accepted:
July 05 2002
Citation
David B. May, Eugenia Etkina; College physics students’ epistemological self-reflection and its relationship to conceptual learning. Am. J. Phys. 1 December 2002; 70 (12): 1249–1258. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.1503377
Download citation file:
Pay-Per-View Access
$40.00
Sign In
You could not be signed in. Please check your credentials and make sure you have an active account and try again.
Citing articles via
A simple model of a gravitational lens from geometric optics
Bogdan Szafraniec, James F. Harford
Playing with active matter
Angelo Barona Balda, Aykut Argun, et al.
The physics of “everesting” on a bicycle
Martin Bier
The hardest-hit home run?
Donald C. Warren
Related Content
The impact of epistemology on learning: A case study from introductory physics
American Journal of Physics (April 2005)
Exploring the Intersections of Personal Epistemology, Public Epistemology, and Affect
AIP Conference Proceedings (November 2007)
Reinventing college physics for biologists: Explicating an epistemological curriculum
Am. J. Phys. (July 2009)
Coupling epistemology and identity in explaining student interest in science
AIP Conference Proceedings (January 2013)
Applied minimalist epistemology (AME): Improving upon three contributions to the dual epistemological problem
AIP Conference Proceedings (May 2000)