Saalih Allie
Dept of Physics
University of Cape Town

Title: Teaching measurement and uncertainty in the freshman physics 
laboratory

Part 1: Over the past few years several studies have documented student
understanding of measurement in the context of laboratory work in physics.
A key finding has been that even though students may be able to perform
complex calculations they do not appear to have developed an understanding
of the underlying concepts. One problem lies with the concepts themselves,
in particular the traditional frequentist formalism. A brief overview of
the research instrument, some typical findings and the probabilistic
interpretation of data from measurements will be discussed.

Part 2: One of the descriptions that has emerged to describe the features
associated with students' views is that of the point and set paradigms.
Most students arrive subscribing to the former while the latter is in fact
compatible with the formal requirements of scientific measurement.  At
first sight it would appear that the aim of instruction should be to move
students' thinking from the point view to the set view.  However, using a
cognitive resources approach to the question points to a deeper unifying
model in which both point and set resources may need to be activated (akin
to say light requiring both particle and wave descriptions depending on
the context). A tentative toy model for understanding student engagement
with measurement is offered.