Assessing Attentiveness to Student Ideas in Physics

This project aims to serve the national interest by improving physics education. It will do so by developing an assessment to evaluate physics teacher preparation programs. This assessment will measure a teacher’s ability to accurately interpret and productively respond to students’ ideas in physics. The proposed assessment tool is intended to address a critical need for common measures of physics educator preparation programs. Such an assessment tool could guide the improvement of individual physics teacher education programs. It would also enable reliable comparisons across programs, pointing the field towards the most promising approaches. In addition, the research required to develop the assessment tool is expected to further refine the construct of teacher attentiveness in physics, exploring the development and interaction of core content knowledge and core pedagogical content knowledge among preservice teachers. The project has both a focus at the physics teacher preparation program level, and an end-goal of preparing teachers who can effectively analyze and respond to student thinking in practice. Therefore, the project intends to develop a selected-response assessment, with a focus on authenticity in the operationalization of attentiveness. Attentiveness, also referred to as responsiveness, is a complex process characterized by the ability of the teacher to identify the substance of students’ ideas, to recognize the disciplinary connections in students’ ideas, and to take up and pursue the substance of student thinking in light of disciplinary goals. The project’s multi-phased development of assessment items for attentiveness in physics is modeled after the Mathematical Attentiveness in Pedagogical Practice item-development process, which gathers authentic responses from both students and educators in the development of a selected-response assessment. The distinct phases of item development will engage physics educators in the cognitive processes needed for attentiveness. The three dimensions of this model include the following: (1) Identifying the pedagogical intent and key disciplinary concept(s) of a specific student task. (2) making evidence-based inferences about a student’s understanding of the disciplinary concept being targeted; and (3) deciding on an appropriate pedagogical response that builds both on an individual student’s thinking and toward the disciplinary intent of the task. The project intends to develop at least three tasks (3 items) for each physics topic (motion, forces, energy, and waves) for students. There will be at least two tasks (4-5 selected-response items for each task) for each topic for teachers. The authentic student and educator responses used during this development process could assist physics education programs to efficiently measure physics teachers’ attentiveness. This work could support the identification of successful physics educator preparation programs. It is expected to allow for better understanding of key elements of physics teacher preparation, as well as allow for continued theoretical work on the construct of attentiveness in physics education. The NSF IUSE: EHR Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.