Electrons Certainly Follow Laws: Integrating Complexity Thinking With How Learners View Knowledge

• In Event: 70.063 - STEM Education in the Postsecondary and University Classroom

Abstract

When students encounter complex phenomena they do not comprehend how order emerges from these systems, what rules exist, and how these systems are unpredictable. Students instead describe these systems in-line with epistemological dimensions for systems that are mechanical. This work sought to connect students’ misconceptions for complex phenomena with epistemologies. Participants (N=41) completed a written protocol for three different complex phenomena inherent in semiconductor engineering – diffusion, drift, and excitation. Through protocol analysis it was determined that students hold misconceptions for complexity that are similar to faulty understandings of the nature of scientific (NOS) knowledge. The misconceptions found (related to rules and predictability) and how they link to NOS and epistemologies are described.

Authors

• Katherine Grace Nelson, Arizona State University

• Jonathan C. Hilpert, Georgia Southern University

• Benjamin C. Heddy, University of Oklahoma

• Sarah K. Brem, Arizona State University