Lisa Goodhew, 2012—What representations teach us about student reasoning

(Link) The importance of informal science education to the field of Physics Education Research includes extending to a broader range of ages and environments than formal science and focusing on broader goals such as participants' identities as scientists. This paper describes 3 aspects of informal science education: programming, research, and curriculum development. A summer camp was run through JILA's PISEC (Partnerships of Informal Science in the Community) program. Participants' use of representations, in particular drawings, in response to different types of prompting was analyzed in both lab notebooks and stop-motion videos made by the participants. In light of the results of this study, a new curriculum was developed for use in the fall 2012 semester of the PISEC program.