UK Centre for Materials Education
Working with you to enhance the student experience
Working with you to enhance the student experience
Caroline Baillie, UK Centre for Materials Education
A student of science will tell you that their lectures are full of facts. Even if the students are also taught how to apply those facts, using complex mathematical formulations, the basic 'building blocks' are still there. It is assumed that first year students need to be 'given' these facts so that they can then go on to understand the more difficult and less tangible aspects of their discipline. However, most scientists will agree that even those basic 'facts' are not really as simple as the text book variety which are presented to a first year student.
In order to explore the concepts to be understood and how they may be identified, we focus on one area of materials science. A series of interviews have been conducted with researchers from eight different countries, all involved in investigating a similar issue. Questions were aimed at exploring their understanding of certain key concepts. Having a better understanding of the way in which the knowledge is understood by different researchers gives us a new way of helping students to approach their own understanding of the concepts. Students can see the concepts from many perspectives and realise that there is not just one way to understand a scientific 'fact'.
We also consider the processes by which the knowledge building occurs through interaction with scholars, and uncover ways in which the process is blocked and ways in which we might recognise knowledge building when it happens. Researchers could see the link between teaching and research, not only in terms of content, but also regarding the process of developing an understanding, or building knowledge. Especially research led Universities could be persuaded to develop knowledge building as a directive for their Learning and Teaching Strategies, within Faculties of Science and Engineering.
For further details on this and related research please contact the UK Centre for Materials Education
Baillie, C., Emanuelsson, J., Marton, F. Building Knowledge about the interface in composite materials - Materials Innovations 2000.
Baillie, C., Emanuelsson, J., Marton, F Building knowledge about the interface, to appear Journal of Materials Education 2001
Baillie, C., Emanuelson, J., Marton, F., 'Building knowledge about interfaces' to appear Composites Part A
