%0 Journal Article
%T Transforming common-sense beliefs into Newtonian thinking through Just-In-Time Teaching
%A Sarah P. Formica
%A Jessica L. Easley
%A Mark C. Spraker
%J Physical Review Special Topics. Physics Education Research
%D 2010
%I 
%X To determine whether teaching an introductory physics course with a traditional lecture style or with Just-in-Time teaching (a student-centered, interactive-engagement style) will help students to better understand Newtonian concepts, such as Newton¡¯s Third Law, 222 students in introductory physics courses taught by traditional lecture styles and Just-in-Time teaching at North Georgia College & State University over the span of five semesters were examined using the Force Concept Inventory as a pretest and a post-test. Overall, the gains favor the Just-in-Time teaching method with a 37.6%¡À2.0% gain compared to the 17.9%¡À2.5% seen in traditional lecture classes. When analyzing only those gains pertaining to the Newton¡¯s Third Law questions, the results again favor the Just-in-Time teaching method with a gain of 50.8%¡À4.1% while the traditional lecture classes only saw a gain of 6.6%¡À5.2%. We also employed a new method of analysis which was a BIT Coding method created to quickly identify students¡¯ understanding of Newton¡¯s Third Law questions. This study shows that students in courses that are taught using the Just-in-Time teaching strategy better understand Newton¡¯s Third Law after instruction than do students in traditional lecture courses.
%U http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.6.020106