Kalman, C. S., Lattery, M., & Sobhanzadeh, M. (2018). Impact of Reflective Writing and Labatorials on Student Understanding of Force and Motion in Introductory Physics. Creative Education, 9, 575–596.
In this study, reflective writing in combination with a new style of introductory physics labs called “labatorials” was used to investigate how students learn the concepts of force and motion. The authors are Physics professors from Concordia University in Montreal and Royal Mount University in Calgary, Canada, and the University of Wisconsin in Oskosh, USA. The reflective writing assignments involved students being prompted to write about what they were learning before coming to the classroom and on a weekly basis. “Labatorials” are a mix of laboratory work and tutorials. In small groups, students used a worksheet with conceptual questions, calculation problems, and instructions for experiments and computer simulations. Students were asked to make predictions about the conceptual questions and after doing the experiment to explain whether their results supported their prediction. Data (n=7) comprised analysis of pre- post-interviews (questions included in Appendix A) and students’ written assignments (rubric included in Appendix B). Analysis suggests that students significantly increased their knowledge of Newton’s theory of force when exposed to these two interventions. Students interviewed at the end of the semester discussed the relationship between force and motion in detail and used other physics concepts such as acceleration and Newton’s laws to support their explanations. Consistency of the interviewees with the class in general was established by analysis of written assignments of a random selection of non-interviewed students (n=12) who gave permission to use their products in this study.