PhD Student Project
This is a joint project of the Department of Physics and the Centre for Higher Education Research and Scholarship (CHERS) at Imperial College London. The 3.5 year fully-funded home-fees position, includes a tax-free stipend of approximately £21,237 per year, fees, and resources for research needs. The student will be located in the South Kensington Campus of Imperial College London. The project will be supervised by Dr Michael Fox (Physics) and Prof Camille Kandiko Howson (CHERS). The student will meet regularly with both supervisors.
The closing date for applications is 3rd January 2025 and the start date will be by mutual agreement.
Overview
This is a Physics/STEM Education Research project that explores the student experiences and behaviours when engaging in the process of calculating uncertainties and how that is, or is not, related to authentic research practice in Physics and other disciplines. In the project the student will engage with Educational Research methodologies, while drawing on and developing deep insight into the concept of measurement.
Background
This project builds on a body of work in the Physics Education Research literature investigating students’ understanding of measurements, which identified two main paradigms considered when students think about measurements – “point-like” thinking and “set-like” thinking (Buffler et al. 2001). The former is where reasoning is based on single measurements, while the latter, and more expert-like, is where reasoning is about a group of measurements collectively. Previous work has shown that students often have a combination of these two paradigms, with novices focused more on “point-like” thinking, and they can be activated based on the situation (Pollard et al. 2020).
Calculation and evaluation of measurement uncertainty are important elements of the process of modelling in science and are necessary to be able to make appropriate decisions based on comparing datasets. Indeed, it is considered so fundamental, that the first lecture of the Physics undergraduate course is dedicated to it and is delivered by the Head of Department. However, students often have difficulty in making such decisions. Researchers have come up with an explicit framework – the Modelling Framework for Experimental Physics – to describe the process (Zwickl et al. 2015, Dounas-Frazer et al. 2018), with the intention to make that more explicit to students. This framework provides context to an uncertainty calculation, and it is within this framework, that the research question is posed.
Project description
Having identified the transition from point to set-like thinking as a key epistemological shift, this project aims to delve deeper into the practicalities of when and how the two paradigms are activated. For example, often, in Physics, we see students calculate an answer but do not give an uncertainty or they want to compare two results but not engaging in the practises of the discipline to do so. In this project, the PhD student will explore why that is. Is it due to missing technical knowledge of how to perform the calculation? Is it because of missing conceptual understanding? Is there an emotional response that hinders that process? Then, how do these components combine to influence student behaviours? Similar questions have been raised in Chemistry Education Research, including how ‘aware’ students are of calculating and accounting for uncertainties.
This PhD project will be conducted in three stages, firstly gathering data from physics researchers, next applying the findings to develop protocols for interviews and observations of physics students, and thirdly taking the findings from physics and conducting interviews with staff across other disciplines to compare across disciplines.
On the side of the project exploring the technical skills required to properly evaluate uncertainties, we pose the question of whether the practises we use to teach undergraduate students truly reflect the way Physicists calculate uncertainties in their day-to-day working lives. In this part of the project, we envision interviewing researchers from groups across Physics to understand:
- How they calculate uncertainties in a practical example
- How they think about the nature of measurement
- What the difference is between what they do in research and how we teach and assess uncertainty calculation
Building on this, the project would then develop an interview protocol to ask students to complete a calculation and prompt them to discuss the uncertainties involved and how they would go about quantifying them. Observations and questions on their emotional response to the task will probe the second part of the research question.
In the third part of the research, conversational interviews will be conducted to present findings from the research in physics and compare these with approaches in other disciplines. Initially, three fields will be targeted: 1) Chemistry, exploring with staff what technical approaches are used to measure uncertainties and how these are (or are not) included in the curriculum; 2) Life Sciences, exploring how students understand and apply uncertainties in their laboratory work; 3) in Civil and Mechanical engineering, exploring how uncertainties are understood and applied and comparing this with the calculation of risk in applied contexts. Further disciplines may be explored based on findings from the first two phases of research. This wider application will allow for sharing of findings from the Physics context – in understanding the contexts of different disciplines then allowing the results to be adapted so they are relevant for other STEM fields, as well as gaining insight from those fields to apply back to a Physics context. Collectively this allows for a STEM-wide view on uncertainties about uncertainty.
Collectively, the results of the research project would identify where there are gaps between both how experts and students think of uncertainties as well as in the techniques we teach students in undergraduate courses. Indeed, in recent research (Geschwind et al. 2024) we found that even many physics instructors were themselves uncertain about the different ways of categorising uncertainty. The key contributions to the literature would be from the identification of authentic practices when teaching uncertainties, in characterising the affective responses by students to the practical calculation of uncertainties, and promoting authentic assessment, feedback, and marking incorporating uncertainty.
As discussed above, the approaches used within Physics vary depending on the sub-discipline. Therefore, a secondary question arises regarding disciplinary norms for uncertainty estimation and cultures around using statistical approaches (the most notable being the Frequentist and Bayesian camps). This direction naturally lends itself to a comparative analysis not only within Physics, but between Physics and other disciplines. This will be explored in the phase three interviews across disciplines.
Academic entry requirements
MSci/MPhys/MSc (Hons) with at least 2:1 or equivalent in a relevant physical science discipline, or relevant Bachelor plus Master’s qualification.
Imperial College London English language requirements apply (where applicable). See https://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/pg/apply/requirements/english/ for details.
What are we looking for in an applicant?
In addition to the academic entry requirements, we are looking for someone with:
- knowledge and experience of experimental measurement in the physical sciences
- an interest in STEM education
- a strong interest in statistics
- an interest in the philosophy/nature of science
and someone who would like to develop their knowledge and skills further in the above areas as well as in:
- educational research
- qualitative methods
- philosophy of science
Contact
We encourage potential applicants to contact Prof Camille Kandiko Howson (email: c.howson@imperial.ac.uk) and Dr Michael Fox (email: michael.fox@imperial.ac.uk) if you would like to discuss the position further.
Applications should be made online.
In the application form, apply to the Department of Physics.
Applications close on 3rd January 2025.
The funding only covers students who are eligible for Home fees. See: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/study/fees-and-funding/tuition-fees/fee-status/ for more information.
References:
Buffler, A., Allie, S., & Lubben, F. (2001). The development of first year physics students’ ideas about measurement in terms of point and set paradigms. International Journal of Science Education, 23(11), 1137–1156. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500690110039567
Pollard, B., Werth, A., Hobbs, R., & Lewandowski, H. J. (2020). Impact of a course transformation on students’ reasoning about measurement uncertainty. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 16(2), 020160. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.16.020160
Dounas-Frazer, D. R., & Lewandowski, H. J. (2018). The modelling framework for experimental physics: Description, development, and applications. European Journal of Physics, 39(6), 064005. https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1361-6404/aae3ce
Zwickl, B. M., Hu, D., Finkelstein, N., & Lewandowski, H. J. (2015). Model-based reasoning in the physics laboratory: Framework and initial results. Physical Review Special Topics—Physics Education Research, 11(2), 020113. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.11.020113