Post-Doctoral Work:
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Consultant to MIT and Harvard (Feb 1st 2007 - July 2nd 2009 )
From February 2007 to July 2009 I worked as a consultant to Picturing to Learn, an NSF-funded project involving science students and faculty members from Harvard, MIT, Duke University, Roxbury Community College, Olin College of Engineering, along with design students and faculty members from the School of Visual Arts, New York. The project is part of the Envisioning Science Program at the Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC) at Harvard University. (More details are available at www.picturingtolearn.org)
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Consultant to the University of Bath (Jan 1st 2007 - Feb 29th 2008)
I assisted members of the Department of Psychology to evaluate a series of films made by an independent film-maker cf: "Chaos
and Pattern: Adventures in Science and Engineering." Our team from the department of Psychology administered a series of questionnaires to students (and teachers) from seven schools in the Bath and Bristol region between May and July 2007. The questionnaires asked about students' attitudes towards science and engineering, their perceptions of scientists and engineers, as well as their views of the films.
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Doctoral Work:
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Abstract from Ciara's Doctoral Thesis: |
| Do physicists ever find it
difficult to get a mental picture of the physical processes involved
in their research? What visualization techniques do physicists use to
conceptualise & communicate physics? What are the perceived pros
and cons of using such visualization techniques? This study explores
such questions by combining qualitative and quantitative methods. These
include, textual analysis of physics journal articles, public lectures,
popular science books and magazine articles; an on-line survey of 225
physicists based primarily at universities across the UK and Ireland;
follow-up e-mails with 13 respondents to pursue key findings from the
on-line questionnaire; and an historical case study of a prize-winning
physicist-engineer who used analogy to provide insights and bridge conceptual
divides between specialists working in sub-fields related to accelerator
physics.
My findings show that many respondents create or use sketches, physical/mathematical
models, analogies and computer simulations as visualisation tools. Interestingly,
some respondents prefer to work with images generated from the underlying
mathematics, rather than images abstracted from phenomena witnessed
in the world of perceptions.
A majority of respondents believed that computer simulations have strengthened
physicists’ visualization capabilities. They are particularly
useful when dealing with unusual geometries and systems that are impossible
(or extremely costly) to experiment upon in a ‘real-world’
laboratory.
I discovered that the forms of analogies employed by respondents were
heavily dependent on the context of use (especially on the audience’s
expertise and the tone of discussion). Analogies containing a hierarchy
of structural relations are particularly useful conceptualisation and
communication tools.
The findings of my research will be of interest to practicing physicists
interested in the conceptualisation and communication techniques used
by their peers; science communicators interested in using ‘good’
analogies to make physics accessible to experts, intermediates and novices;
and science educators interested in applying similar model-based reasoning
skills in the classroom. |
| If
you'd like to read more from my doctoral thesis... |
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- My thanks also to the select group of physicists who replied to
my follow-up e-mail queries in 2004-2005.
A collation of their responses can be downloaded as an Excel file
here.
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- I am also very grateful to my interviewees (Dr. J.D. Lawson and
Prof. Sir Michael Berry) for their valuable input.
Interview transcripts available upon request.
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