Papers by Ibrahim Halloun
No escriba nada en este cuestionario. Marque sus respuestas en la hoja para computadora ParSCORE.... more No escriba nada en este cuestionario. Marque sus respuestas en la hoja para computadora ParSCORE. Marque sólo una respuesta por pregunta. No deje ninguna pregunta sin contestar. Evite adivinar. Sus respuestas deben reflejar lo que usted personalmente piensa. En la hoja para computadora ParSCORE: Use sólo un lápiz No. 2, y siga las instrucciones para marcar sus respuestas. Escriba su número de identificación (ID), que es el número que le da su escuela o su profesor. Marque "A" en el espacio "Test Form". Escriba el "Exam No." que le da su profesor. Calcule terminar este cuestionario en 30 minutos.
modeling.asu.edu
The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a multiple-choice test designed to assess student understa... more The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a multiple-choice test designed to assess student understanding of the most basic concepts in Newtonian mechanics. The FCI can be used for several different purposes, but the most important one is to evaluate the effectiveness of ...
SPICE: Systemic, Praxis-Immersive, Convergence Education. A Paradigm Shift in Education for Excellence in the 21st Century, 2023
The world within and around us is a world of systems. Major innovations of our time are the upsho... more The world within and around us is a world of systems. Major innovations of our time are the upshots of praxis-based disciplinary convergence, i.e., of bringing together, into generative consonance, theory and practice from different disciplines, especially disciplines from different fields like arts and science that have long been erroneously considered to be remotely related. Prevailing paradigms in education often go back to the early days of the 20 th century and sometimes long before and have become gravely superannuated. These paradigms drive for compartmentalized knowledge and segregation among disciplines, even within the same field. Latest developments in neuroscience show that their cognitive and pedagogical foundations are seriously flawed, thus leading to detrimental classroom practices that prevent students from developing learning and occupational competencies fit for the 21 st century. Formal education has the major mission to empower students for self-fulfillment and for coping with the realities of our time so that they may have decent and productive lives and make significant contributions to sustainable development of their communities and ultimately of the globe at large. Formal education has thus to dispose of archaic paradigms and opt instead for paradigms that are in harmony with the systemic nature of the world, particularly of our minds and brains, and that meet the realities of the 21 st century, particularly in the job market. Systemic, praxisimmersive, convergence education (SPICE) is proposed in this paper to this end.
Force Concept Inventory The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a multiple-choice “test ” designed t... more Force Concept Inventory The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a multiple-choice “test ” designed to assess student understanding of the most basic concepts in Newtonian mechanics. The FCI can be used for several different purposes, but the most important one is to evaluate the effectiveness of instruction. For a full understanding of what has gone into the development of this instrument and of how it can be used, the FCI papers1,2 should be consulted, as well as: (a) the papers on the Mechanics Diagnostic Test3,4, the FCI predecessor, (b) the paper on the Mechanics Baseline Test5 which is recommended as an FCI companion test for assessing quantitative problem solving skills, and (c) Richard Hake’s6 data collection on university and high school physics taught by many different teachers and methods across the USA.
A mix-up prevails in the educational literature within and among unidimensional and multidimensio... more A mix-up prevails in the educational literature within and among unidimensional and multidimensional knowledge aspects. Precise knowledge taxonomy based on sound cognitive criteria and cutting across disciplines is necessary to adopt efficient pedagogy for learning and teaching all sorts of knowledge and to design and implement appropriate curricula.
Student views about knowing and learning physics have been probed with the Views About Sciences S... more Student views about knowing and learning physics have been probed with the Views About Sciences Survey (VASS) along six conceptual dimensions, and classified into four distinct profiles: expert, high transitional, low transitional, and folk. As an aid to interpreting VASS results, this article provides a qualitative analysis of student responses to items within each of the six dimensions and a quantitative analysis of their relation to students ’ profiles. Students with an expert profile are chiefly scientific realists and critical learners. Students with a folk profile are primarily naive realists and passive learners. Students with transitional profiles hold mixtures of these views. Student profiles correlate significantly with physics achievement. Indeed, they may be major determinants of what students learn in physics courses.
Schematism is proposed as part of an epistemological framework for constructing and employing sci... more Schematism is proposed as part of an epistemological framework for constructing and employing scientific knowledge. Within this framework, it is proposed that a concept of physics can be explicitly defined in a scientific theory by a schema that includes: (1) the domain of the concept; (2) its organization, i.e., the relationships between this particular concept and other concepts; (3) it quantification, i.e. its measurement according to well-defined laws and rules; (4) its expression, i.e., the set of words, depictions and mathematical representations denoting it; and (5) its employment, i.e., the ways it can be used to deal with physical situations that belong to its domain, and to construct and employ scientific knowledge. The schematic structure of the concept of force is presented for illustration, and results of its application in training two groups of Lebanese students are outlined. Contains 46 references. (Author)
Modeling theory provides science teachers with pedagogy for structuring course content and mediat... more Modeling theory provides science teachers with pedagogy for structuring course content and mediating learning activities in ways to help students evolve meaningfully and efficiently into the realm of science. A scientific theory is structured accordingly around a few basic models, with each model representing a particular pattern in the physical world and serving specific functions with regard to the pattern in question. Under teacher mediation, students go through well-structured modeling cycles. Each cycle is devoted to empower students with appropriate tools and skills, especially modeling schemata and schemes, for gradually constructing and deploying a particular scientific model while regulating their own knowledge about the physical world and the realm of science. Modeling schemata serve as organizational tools for students to structure their conceptions meaningfully and practical templates for teachers to plan and evaluate instruction efficiently. Modeling schemes foster development of tools, norms and rules of scientific inquiry, especially those of model construction and deployment. Students reach significantly higher levels of performance in their science courses under modeling instruction than under other forms of instruction. Numerous movements have taken place in the last two decades to reform the state of science education worldwide. Reform has been called for following the alarming outcomes of local and international research on student knowledge in various scientific disciplines. Constantly throughout the second half of the twentieth century, research has been basically showing that traditional science courses of lecture and demonstration do not bring students up to meaningful understanding of course content. At best, most students who pass traditional exams do so only because of their capacity to recall theoretical statements and reproduce problem solving routines that they managed to memorize by rote and to retain in their memory for only a short time. In the meantime, research in cognitive science and the philosophy of science has been providing us with significant insight into expert and novice ways of inquiry about the real world, and urging us to bridge the gap between the two groups by bringing expert practices into the classroom. Many educators and concerned groups have in particular been advocating modeling practices that scientists resort to in their research (cf. Halloun, 2004, for an extensive list of references). Modeling theory is originally a theory of science promoted by philosophers of science and cognitive scientists. This author has been developing it into a theory of science education for the last two decades. The pedagogical theory can be readily deployed into mathematics and technology education. It has originally been developed for physics curricula at the secondary school and college (university) levels (Halloun
ABSTRACT Profile Shaping Education (PSE) is a generic pedagogical framework developed by this aut... more ABSTRACT Profile Shaping Education (PSE) is a generic pedagogical framework developed by this author, based on his work on Modeling Theory in Science Education*. PSE calls for education not to merely prepare students for passing exams, but to empower them with a profile for success, and even excellence in modern life. The profile draws on research in cognition which shows that: (a) professionals, especially those in academic communities, share common expert paradigms** for knowledge construction and deployment, and (b) that there are patterns in the structure of expert paradigms and practice of accomplished professionals in various communities. PSE subsequently calls on education to systematically empower students with profiles that recapitulate such patterns, in particular the 4-P profile outlined below. Under PSE, the profile is reified in various educational fields following well-defined cognitive tenets and pedagogical principles and rules. It can be translated in any given curriculum in the form of epistemic, cognitive, behavioral and metacognitive learning outcomes in accordance with a novel taxonomy developed by this author. This is a research-based, generic four-dimensional taxonomy that may be applied under any pedagogical framework to specify conceptions, reasoning skills, dexterities and dispositions that students need to achieve in any educational field for success in modern life. Paradigmatic A paradigmatic student realizes that knowledge construction and deployment in every profession are governed by certain paradigm(s) in line with which s/he needs to develop her/his own profile. For efficient transcendence of personal paradigm(s), the student concentrates on a balanced and comprehensive repertoire of foundational and generic episteme and cross-disciplinary habits of mind that allow her/him to realize the big picture within and across disciplines.
Contrasting Alternatives is a rating scale originally developed for the Views About Science Surve... more Contrasting Alternatives is a rating scale originally developed for the Views About Science Survey, VASS. VASS addresses scientific inquiry and the structure and validity of scientific theory, as well as learning styles with a focus on reflective thinking, and the relevance and intellectual feasibility of science courses. VASS started as an open-ended questionnaire with the intention to turn it eventually into a closed format so that it becomes feasible to administer to large student populations. Multiple-choice and Likert formats were then considered, and tried, in a later stage. Soon, however, it became evident that such formats were not suitable for VASS. In fact, research then indicated, and it still does, that these formats, and especially the Likert scale, exhibit insuperable validity and reliability problems when used in surveying students' dispositions and learning styles. I then came up with the Contrasting Alternatives rating scale (CArs), tested this survey format and...
The use of models in a student-centered teaching strategy is shown to improve the effectiveness o... more The use of models in a student-centered teaching strategy is shown to improve the effectiveness of college physics instruction. The content of a college mechanics course is formulated as a theory of mathematical modeling with explicit construction and deployment rules. An accompanying teaching method that accounts for individual differences in students' preinstructional knowledge base is also formulated. Groups of college physics students were trained following the proposed strategy, and compared to control subjects taught by conventional methods. The comparison was made with respect to students' performance on course examinations and on a set of diagnostic tests. The diagnostic tests were validated to assess students' initial knowledge state and changes brought about by college physics instruction. Trained students are consistently shown to perform significantly better than control subjects both within and outside the context of the training program. A competence-perfor...
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Papers by Ibrahim Halloun