Action research, as a practitioner-oriented inquiry, seeks to change instructional practices through planning the lesson, teaching the lesson plan, observing the implementation of the lesson, and reflecting on the teaching experience (Altrichter et al., 2013). Teachers-as-researchers ask questions, collect, reflect on, and evaluate data in ongoing cycles to better understand how they teach and how effectively their teaching methods help their students learn (Altrichter et al., 2013). Although action research methodology has the potential to change teaching practices, it has rarely been used in undergraduate science education (Raubenheimer & Myka, 2005). This paper investigates the experiences of an undergraduate physics laboratory instructor as she uses action research while implementing an instructional approach that incorporates scientific practices into students’ learning process.

The new instructional approach implemented in this study aims to address the goals of teaching undergraduate physics courses and to revise physics laboratory instruction according to the recommendations of the AAPT. The 5E instructional model is an effective way to create lesson plans and embed scientific inquiry into instruction by providing a structure that encourages students to engage with, explore, explain, elaborate on, and evaluate scientific processes while engaging in laboratory activities (Tanner, 2010). The 5E instructional model is a learning cycle based on a constructivist approach and promotes a conceptual-change model of learning (Bybee, et al., 2006). This learning cycle fosters active student participation and guides students to be critical of their existing ideas and to apply their understandings into new situations (Posner, Strike, Hewson, & Gertzog, 1982). Therefore, this study’s instructional approach incorporates scientific practices into the 5E inquiry model during physics laboratory instruction.

In this study, the authors explore the experiences of the instructor, who engages in action research on her teaching and students’ learning processes while embedding scientific practices into the 5E instructional model. The instructor used the innovative instructional resources from the suggestions of the AAPT community that require students to work in groups, to develop a method to collect and analyze data, to use models and argumentation, and to communicate information. This study uses action research to examine the implementation of the 5E instructional approach, with the intention of identifying learning challenges and successes during the implementation.

The study is guided by two research questions: 1.What experiences does a physics laboratory instructor have while implementing the instructional approach? 2.What challenges do the students of the physics laboratory instructor experience while learning through the instructional approach?

This paper is written by two authors: a science educator and an instructor-as-(action) researcher.The participant of the study was the instructor-as-researcher (first author), who was a graduate student in science education and taught undergraduate physics laboratory students as a teaching assistant in an urban university in the southeastern region of the United States. This action research focused on the physics laboratory instructor’s experiences in her classroom and demonstrated how the instructor brought about a change in the pedagogical practices while integrating the 5E model. The role of the science educator was to act as a mentor and provide suggestions and resources during the action research process. Additionally, a total of 60 students participated in the study. These students attended three separate classes, averaging 20 students per class (students’ demographic information is available at ). The research was conducted in one class each semester across three consecutive semesters. The 60 students attended the laboratory component of a mandatory physics course for science and engineering majors, which included separate lecture and laboratory sections. Each week, students met for three hours and worked in groups of two or three during a 60- minute tutorial followed by a two-hour physics lab experiment. Students had to attend and complete the work for at least eight physics labs of a twelve-week laboratory component to pass the physics course. The lab portion of the course consisted of three parts: tutorial (5%), physics lab (15%), and tutorial homework (5%), which was worth 25% of the overall grade. Seventy five percent of the course grade was for the lecture component of the physics course.

Different forms of qualitative data were collected during three semesters including three cycles of action research to document the experiences of the instructor and her students. The data collected in each cycle followed the plan, act, observe, reflect sequence. The data collected during the first cycle were used to revise the lesson planning for the second cycle; the data were collected and analyzed in the second cycle to change the instruction in the third cycle. (The timeline for action research is available at .)

The data sources were the instructor and student reflections, weekly lesson plans, and lesson artifacts (tutorial and physics experiment worksheets). The instructor wrote pre- and postlesson reflections to demonstrate her mental processes before and after teaching each lesson. The instructor’s reflections focused on what the instructor planned and accomplished based on students’ learning and what the strengths and weaknesses of the lesson were before and after the implementation (Etkina, 2010). The instructor used her reflections to make modifications to her pedagogical acts while implementing the instructional approach across different cycles. In addition, students’ written reflections were collected at the end of each laboratory section, and these reflections focused on the strengths and weaknesses of the lesson, students’ learning difficulties, and instructional strategies. Students’ reflections provided feedback about the instructor’s teaching and their learning process. Moreover, the instructor developed weekly lesson plans to integrate scientific practices into the 5E instructional model for physics laboratory instruction. These lesson plans, instructor and student reflections, and lesson artifacts were used to explain how the instructor integrated the instructional approach into undergraduate physics laboratory instruction.

Inductive data analysis was conducted through identifying emergent codes and developing categories in an iterative process (Merriam, 2009). The instructor’s reflections were analyzed in order to explore the instructor’s experiences and pedagogical decisions related to the implementation of the instructional approach. Lesson artifacts and students’ reflections were also analyzed in order to examine students’ strengths and challenges during the learning process. The lesson plans were also reviewed in order to understand how the instructor modified her teaching strategies according to her and her students’ reflections.

The instructor’s reflections and lesson plans from the first cycle informed her planning during the second cycle. She also reviewed the student-created artifacts such as students’ tutorial and physics experiment worksheets, formative assessment task responses, and their postlesson reflections to identify their learning challenges and make modifications in the instruction accordingly.

First, the instructor observed the ineffectiveness of using multiple-choice questions to understand the rationale of students’ thinking. In her prelesson reflection, she stated: When I looked at students’ previous papers, I realized that I should not ask multiple-choice questions. They did a good job and provided the correct answer. They could answer where the image of an object appeared. However, they did not know how to find the image of a nail in the mirror with a hands-on experiment. I made a mistake that I focused on whether students could answer a question. They should be engaged in the process, not finding the right answers. I should integrate activities that could promote students’ thinking to explore the concepts.

The instructor changed the multiple-choice questions to open-ended questions. However, students tended to provide short, simple answers rather than detailed explanations of their reasoning. For instance, when the students were asked, “What happened to the image position as the object distance was increased?” they provided a one-word response, such as “decreasing.” The instructor incorporated writing frames into the questions to encourage students to give more evidence-based explanations, such as “My idea is that …, my reasons are that …, the evidence I would use to convince somebody is that …” (Osborne, Erduran, Simon, & Monk, 2001).

Furthermore, the tutorial and physics experiments promoted students’ engagement in the use and development of models, but students had difficulty in drawing or explaining the visual representations in physics. The instructor aimed to integrate learning tasks that could guide students toward thinking about different types of models (e.g., visual, qualitative or quantitative) while predicting and explaining scientific phenomena across different cycles of the 5E instructional approach (an example activity is available at ). The result was a noticeable increase in students’ interest and curiosity. Instead of seeking to only provide the correct answers, they tried to understand the meaning and real-world applications of concepts. They were still puzzled during the engagement phases, but higher-level questions and an increased level of interest in the use of models started to appear. The following excerpt from the instructor’s postlesson reflection illustrates a student’s attempt to ask a question about his prediction of a physical model: I asked a very easy question, whether or not capacitors could have different shapes, and most of the students said, “Yes! They can have different shapes.” However, one student asked if we could have a capacitor like a hollow cylinder. It was a higher-level question; in physics lessons, students learn hollow cylinder for integral calculations. Although I considered that this question was easy and did not make students think, it made a student consider a different representation of the concept.

The instructor felt she successfully fostered students’ engagement with using models and asking questions; however, she was still concerned about students’ attitudes toward participating in group or class discussions. The instructor aimed to encourage students to communicate their ideas to both their group and the entire class. She provided two competing theories on “light rays” concept (Osborne et al., 2001) during the engagement phase. By introducing these two competing theories, the instructor hoped to open a discussion about how light travels through a medium. Students were introduced to the claim-evidence-reasoning-rebuttal components (Berland & McNeill, 2010) to develop their arguments. During the group and classroom discussions, students had high interest in the question; they were puzzled and enthusiastic to discuss their ideas, and they showed academic interest in each other’s arguments. Their verbal explanations allowed the teacher to better understand students’ prior conceptions (a sample class discussion is available at ). In the postlesson reflection, the instructor stated: … I began to introduce the argument structure as the claim-evidence-reasoning-rebuttal components while teaching in the laboratory. I was afraid that students would not be interested. But they said, “Are we doing philosophy?” and they developed a high interest in providing the evidence-claim pairs while discussing the question. I utilized one of the frameworks created for argumentation: competing theories. Students began to discuss with their group members and other groups. I observed that utilization of argumentation by introducing the argument structure caused the academic interest of the students to increase. As students became puzzled, they asked higher-level questions and made explanations in their groups and during the whole-class discussion.

Summary of cycle 2 is presented in Table 2.

Ozden Sengul (ozden.sengul@boun.edu.tr) is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics and Science Education at Bogazici Universitesi in Istanbul, Turkey. Renee Schwartz (rschwartz@gsu.edu) is professor in the Department of Middle and Secondary Education at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia.