Resources-oriented instruction: What does it mean, and what might it look like?

Abstract

Resources-oriented instruction in physics treats student thinking as sensible and then seeks to connect what students are saying and doing to physics content and practices. This paper uses an illustrative case to make progress toward answering the instructional questions: “What does resources-oriented instruction in physics look like?” and “How can I do it?”. We analyze an interaction between a university TA and a group of four introductory physics students completing a worksheet about mechanical wave propagation. We show some of the ways in which the TA's instructional moves supported students in making conceptual progress, even though several of the students' ideas would not be accepted as correct by many physicists.