Physics & Astronomy Colloquium — Dr. Suzanne White Brahmia
About the event
The Department of Physics and Astronomy invites all to a colloquium featuring Dr. Suzanne White Brahmia, Associate Professor at University of Washington. Dr. Brahmia will present their talk, “Measuring and Enhancing Quantitative Reasoning in Physics Instruction”.
Meet for refreshments before the lecture at 11:45 a.m. – 12:10 p.m. in the foyer on floor G above the lecture hall.
Abstract: Being able to identify and understand quantitative situations is an expected outcome of taking a physics course. In the current crises in which we are mired, it is also essential to be an informed global citizen. Although quantitative procedural competency is a prerequisite for most introductory physics courses, spontaneous and productive mathematical reasoning across physics contexts is a desirable learning outcome of these courses for all students, regardless of major, and ideally it develops there. Physics Quantitative Literacy (PQL) is a set of interconnected skills and habits of mind that support quantitative reasoning about the physical world. In spite of being an important objective of physics instruction, it is not yet common practice to use a validated instrument for assessing to what extent physics courses actually develop PQL. In this talk I will present the PIQL, Physics Inventory of Quantitative Literacy, which is a recently published assessment instrument developed in a multi-institution collaboration and validated at the UW. PIQL targets introductory physics – where the “math world” and “physical world” meet. Unlike multiple-choice concept inventories (such as the Force Concept Inventory), which assess conceptual mastery of specific physics topics, PIQL is a multiple-choice reasoning inventory that can provide snapshots of student reasoning that is continuously developing across multiple courses. Our results reveal that, for most students, this kind of reasoning develops very little in the calculus-based sequence of introductory physics courses. I will describe how this work can help lead to improved instruction that better meets the objective of developing physics quantitative literacy. I will end by discussing instructional interventions that may show promise in improving this aspect of physics learning. This work is support by the National Science Foundation DUE-IUSE # 1832836, # 1832880, and # 1833050.
The paper describing PIQL is posted here:
https://journals.aps.org/prper/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.17.020129