Exploring the introductory physics classroom through the lens of intellectual humility: Handling what you do not know

Abstract

The growing adoption of active learning techniques in physics courses requires that students productively engage in collaboration with their peers. Although studies in physics education research (PER) have addressed aspects of group work, the problem persists of how to engage students in collaborative work with appropriate self-awareness, adequate argumentation skills, openness to the views of others, and willingness to negotiate their ideas. In this article, we present intellectual humility (IH) as a new construct for PER to help advance our understanding and support of students’ collaboration with peers. We particularly focus on authentic group work engagement, where students must handle their intellectual shortcomings during discussions in order to make sense of physics and solve problems. The aim of our work is to formally introduce the construct of IH from a limitations-owning perspective and report on the results of a mixed-methods study investigating students’ learning experiences in introductory physics courses through an IH lens. The study provides quantitative evidence about how students gauge their own IH based on analysis of survey responses. We also provide an initial empirical foundation for facets of IH already present in the physics classroom from analysis of students’ reflections and researchers’ classroom observations. We find that students report high levels of love of learning, one characteristic of IH, however, our findings also point to students discomfort with intellectual limitations and inadequate handling of these shortcomings during group work. Our results suggest that students would benefit from learning spaces that welcome and encourage discussions around uncertainties, with minimal social risks that may be perceived as hindering their engagement.