INSIGHT FROM PHYSICS STUDENTSAs an undergraduate researcher, one of my tasks is to transcribe student and teacher interviews and capture their insights and their experiences with the curriculum. In a unit where students studied momentum, they elaborated on one activity in which they designed a car for their loved one and had to implement safety features for the passenger in case of an accident. Often times when I think back to my science classes, we were not asked about how the content was tied to our personal lives. We might have gotten an example of how it affects our lives in an every-day style, but when the teachers in this study elicited their students thinking of their loved ones, students’ intrinsic motivation was fostered, and they wanted to learn how to keep loved ones safe. In the following quotes, we see how students have positively perceived the new ways in which teachers are presenting physics topics to them. One student explains, “He’s not one of those teachers that’s like, ‘well if you don’t get it, then that sucks, that is how I am teaching you’. He will figure out a different way.” Another student said, “A lot of students learn different ways between like notes and labs and it’s important to find a balance.” For these students, having a different way to learn the content was crucial to their education. Being able to find different ways to present this information is helpful for students who do not learn in traditional ways (i.e. lectures and note-taking). Being able to present other means of learning, like connecting it to their personal lives, gives them a new internalized motivation for them to create a car that can protect their loved ones from a crash. I was also present the day that students presented their designed car models and what safety features they implemented to help ease the impact of an accident. Students were both given the opportunity to design their car in terms of their loved one’s favorite type of car, color, style, and brand, while thinking of what safety features to include outside and inside of the cars. Finding ways for students to let their creativity flow while tying it to physics is important. I believe we shouldn't outcast creativity from science nor separate art from science topics. Merging both art and physics can allow student’s creativity to grow and further research would be needed to understand how the implementation of creativity and science subjects already are affecting students. Diana Pablo-RamirezUndergraduate Research Assistant
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