ISLE Physics: Scientific Abilities

It is a good question why your program asks you to take physics. A number of years ago some researchers at the University of Minnesota asked the engineering faculty what they saw as the most important student outcomes for the calculus physics course. You will notice that the desired outcomes are mostly framed in terms of depth of conceptual understanding and the development of effective strategies to understand and analyze problems in the context of physics. What is desired is process understanding and not so much factual knowledge. In the years since physics educators have been working to develop strategies that respond to these desired student outcomes which can be summarized as 'Learn to think/act like a scientist!'.

There are many threads in Physics Education Research (PER) like any other large effort. One thread that has been thoughtfully developed and aligns with my own teaching patterns is ISLE Physics developed by Eugenia Etkina and her collaborators at Rutgers University. Among many resources they have developed are a set of rubrics that articulate a coherent view of what it means to think and act like a scientist. Since these rubrics are important in my thinking as I try to develop activities for this class I am collecting them here so they are easily available. You can find the originals at the ISLE resource site. I share them here with explicit permission from Eugenia and any changes or departures from the originals are strictly my responsibility.

I think it is incredibly important to affirm that these scientific abilities are learnable skills not innate talents. The purpose of this class is to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses and offer activities and opportunities for you to improve your skills. Like most other skills we each proceed at our own pace and achieve differently but nearly everyone is capable of scientific competence.