Dear colleagues,

Please join us for our first SoTL Exchange presentation of the year, presented by Mandy Sobhanzadeh, MRU Senior Physics Lab Instructor, and PhD Candidate in Physics Education at UofC:

Thursday September 10, 12-1 pm, Y324

Implementing Reflective Writing in Combination with Labatorials in Science

Students tend to memorize the materials that they see in science textbooks without thinking about their meaning, because they believe that language and words hold the knowledge and they need to use the same words and terms in order to show their understanding (Eger, 1993; Kalman, 2006). Such students who think that knowledge in science is a body of settled facts that comes from authority take a passive role in learning and become a receiver of knowledge. It is up to us as teachers to motivate students to think about the meaning of concepts rather than memorizing the terms and definitions. Thinking about the meaning of concepts is related to the topic of hermeneutics which is the theory of interpretation. Having a hermeneutical approach to science helps students gain a deeper understanding of the meaning (Eger, 1993). To help students approach science textbooks in the manner of hermeneutics, we use a writing activity called “reflective writing” in a new style of introductory physics labs called “labatorials” at Mount Royal University. Students interpret the concepts related to each lab and reflect their own understanding of them before doing experiments. We have studied students’ perspectives on reflective writing and labatorial activities. We used the disciplined-focused epistemological beliefs questionnaire (DFEBQ) developed by Hofer (2000) to find out whether the combinations of these activities can change students’ beliefs of knowledge and learning. This presentation will describe the activities and present data showing students’ perspectives on them as well as changes in their epistemological beliefs.