Abstract
Writing is an integral part of the process of science. In the undergraduate physics curriculum, the most common place that students engage with scientific writing is in lab classes, typically through lab notebooks, reports, and proposals. There has not been much research on why and how we include writing in physics lab classes, and instructors may incorporate writing for a variety of reasons. Through a broader study of multiweek projects in advanced lab classes, we have developed a framework for thinking about and understanding the role of writing in lab classes. This framework defines and describes the breadth of goals for incorporating writing in lab classes, and is a tool we can use to begin to understand why, and subsequently how, we teach scientific writing in physics.
Highlights
Laboratory classes are an essential element of the undergraduate physics curriculum; they afford opportunities for students to learn lab skills such as troubleshooting or modeling, learn physics content, understand how the community of practicing physicists engages in the process of experimentation, and develop an identity as a physicist [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
The first three categories were a priori, while the latter two categories emerged from the data analysis process
Whereas above we introduced the idea of different modes of writing under the general communication category, it may be a specific goal of instructors to have students engage in different kinds of writing, both formal and informal, that mirror what they would have to do as professional physicists [43]
Summary
Laboratory classes are an essential element of the undergraduate physics curriculum; they afford opportunities for students to learn lab skills such as troubleshooting or modeling, learn physics content, understand how the community of practicing physicists engages in the process of experimentation, and develop an identity as a physicist [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) published a set of recommendations for the undergraduate physics laboratory curriculum that includes “communicating physics” as a key learning outcome that lab classes should attend to [9]. Some argue that the best place to teach scientific writing skills is in lab classes, where students do physics [5]. Whether it is because most of the “doing” of science takes place in lab classes, or because. We provide a brief overview of the literature on writing reforms and how they have been realized in science (Sec. II A), and we outline a few specific approaches to writing in lab classes in physics or other related fields (Sec. II B).
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