In the spring semester of 2011, I visited Tokyo Gakugei University to
assist in introducing and implementing Tutorials (reformed physics
curriculum). While the course was taking place, I collected video
data from various sources, including one-on-one interviews with
students and the classroom itself. Many students revealed in
interviews that their prior physics classes had been lecture-based and
had emphasized memorizing laws and equations for problem solving.
Tutorials, in contrast, have students work in small groups to complete
worksheets of conceptual physics problems and emphasize explaining
one's own reasoning. Students said that their previous experiences
in physics had given them the impression that "learning physics" means
absorbing the teacher's knowledge, whether it makes sense or not. As
a result of Tutorials, however, students explained that they now see
that one's own ideas, experiences, and intuitions can be valuable
tools for learning physics. In-class video data suggests that this
attitude toward physics affected the way that students engaged with
learning new content. In this talk, I will showcase some data from
an interview as well as from a group of students trying to reconcile
their intuitions about electrical circuits with results from an
experiment they conduct.