Collaborative Research: Unifying Science for Students (USS): Investigating transfer within a coherent, interdisciplinary set of science courses

Whatcom Community College, Bellingham WA

Investigators

Abstract

This Exploration and Design project in the Engaged Student Learning track in the Improving Undergraduate Science Education program seeks to address the intractable concept of transfer of learning to new settings. A central assumption in most systems of education is that students will be able to apply knowledge and skills beyond the context in which they are originally learned and hence transfer their learning. Existing research studies indicate, however, that successful transfer is exceedingly rare. In this project, transfer will be examined within an existing series of undergraduate science courses intended to promote coherent understanding of energy in physics, chemistry, Earth science, and biology. Energy, a unifying concept important in most science disciplines, is central to scientific literacy and is an idea students should be able to apply to a variety of situations. The integrated curriculum presents energy coherently across disciplines, was designed on the basis of cognitive research, and has been extensively classroom tested at multiple institutions. The course sequence thus serves as a natural laboratory to investigate how much transfer is possible under highly favorable, yet still realizable, conditions. Unifying Science for Students will measure and describe transfer, as well as document the specific components of instruction that promote transfer. Special attention will be paid to understanding how to support transfer among students from traditionally underrepresented groups. Findings will contribute to the knowledge base of what works in supporting application of energy concepts across contexts, for all students. This project may also help to establish the integrated course sequence as a national model for coherent, cross-disciplinary undergraduate science education. The integrated curriculum spans four courses: The Flow of Matter and Energy in Physical Systems, Earth Systems, Life Systems, and Chemical Systems. Unifying Science for Students will bring together expertise in physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and cognitive science at two institutions to add to the research base on transfer, using this course series. It will do so by: (1) evaluating the extent to which students successfully transfer understanding of energy in a coherent, constructivist-based sequence of science courses; (2) documenting the productive and problematic reasoning approaches that arise when students transfer ideas about energy to new contexts; (3) identifying instructional cues that facilitate transfer; and (4) investigating the impact of explicit instruction in metacognition on the understanding, retention, and transfer of energy concepts across disciplines. Quantitative and qualitative methods will be employed to address these goals. A longitudinal study will generate quantitative measures of the transfer of energy concepts from the original learning context, physics, to a target domain, chemistry. Interviews, classroom observations, and analysis of written work will be used to describe what transfer "looks like" by developing a taxonomy of discipline-specific transfer attempts. Finally, a quasi-experimental study will investigate the impact of metacognitive writing assignments on transfer. The general and discipline-specific knowledge generated through this project will be situated to inform curriculum design so that transfer can become a more realizable goal in higher education. The Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship program is providing co-funding for this project in recognition of its alignment with the broader teacher preparation goals of the Noyce effort.