Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Physics at the University of Sydney (1992-1995)
Doctor of Philosophy in Physics Education at the University of Sydney (1996-1999)
PhD Supervisor: Associate Professor Ian Johnston (We Worship the IDJ!)
How Students Learn Physical Optics
For university students studying physics, physical optics is considered a cornerstone topic that formally links observations about light with wave theory. This topic usually provides the wave theory foundation upon which other aspects of physics are built. The preliminary project was a fact-finding study focusing on three students and a lecturer, based on the analysis of data collected in this fact-finding study a research instrument was developed. Students participating in the fact-finding study had difficulties with a number of concepts integral to physical optics. They tended to organise their understanding of physical optics into isolated groups of concepts and examples, which were linked to their prior knowledge of subjects such as geometrical optics and waves. The lecturer's perceptions of student learning were at odds with our results. Traditional assessment techniques provide limited information on student learning, illustrating the need for a carefully constructed research instrument to more thoroughly investigate learning in physical optics. The preliminary project laid the foundations for the development of a research instrument that comprised of a survey and a concept mapping exercise, covering a selected number of fundamental concepts. The research instrument was administered to 228 second year physics students at the University of Sydney during 1997 and 1998. For the survey, a phenomenographic approach was adopted, and supported by content, context and correctness analyses. A scoring procedure was used to analyse the concept maps. The results from the research instrument suggested that new concepts are considered superficially and are quickly associated with other ideas in a student's current body of knowledge; the reintegration of inappropriately associated pre-existing concepts does not often occur; the development of mental models with time is minimal and that the majority of students retain isolated and context dependent knowledge structures; and, students have great difficulty in applying their knowledge to interpret scientific language and solve problems in unfamiliar contexts. The outcomes of this investigation parallels findings in other areas of physics educational research, that preconceptions held by students do not change easily.
I would like to acknowledge the support and sheer bloody mindedness of FLETCH during the thesis writing ordeal.
