Reflective Writing (RW)

Labatorials (Lbt)

Metacognitive activity; has students examine textual material, before coming to the classroom in the manner of a hermeneutic circle (Gadamer, 1975/1960) . The Hermeneutic approach starts by having students initiate a self-dialogue about each textual extract. Within the framework of such a dialogue, there exist two “horizons”: the horizon that contains everything that a student believes from the particular vantage point of encountering the textual extract & second horizon encompassing the potential in the textual extract; sense in which the words, in the textual extract, are related with in the language game understood by the author of the textbook. Student approaches textual extract with preconceptions (misconceptions). Key quintessential experience occurs when the student is pulled up short by the textual extract. “Either it does not yield any meaning or its meaning is not compatible with what we had expected” (Gadamer, 1975/1960: p. 237) . At this point the dialogue begins. The student questions what is known within the entire horizon (Kalman, 2011: p. 163) .

Developed by Physics Education Development group-University of Calgary (Sobhanzadeh et al., 2017) inspired by introductory physics tutorial system at University of Washington (McDermott & Shaffer, 1998) . “Labatorial” -combination of “laboratory” and “tutorial”: students in groups of 3 or 4 students use a worksheet with conceptual questions, calculation problems, and instructions for experiments and computer simulations. Worksheet start with conceptual questions and then asks students to make predictions. After doing the experimental part, students need to explain whether their results support their prediction or notand complete an Lbt worksheet. Usually 3 to 6 checkpoints on each worksheet to encourage an ongoing interaction between the students and lab instructor. At a checkpoint, they review the answers with the lab instructor. If the answer to a question is wrong or students are not proceeding in the right direction, the lab instructor leads the students to find the correct answer by themselves, exploring and discussing alternative ideas.