An increasing number of introductory physics courses are seeking to incorporate “authentic practices,” and a large area of focus in this trend is the incorporation of computational problems into the curriculum. These problems offer students an opportunity to engage with the programming practices and numerical problem-solving methods used by physicists. Understanding how instructors approach teaching such problems is essential for improving instruction and problem design. We conducted a phenomenographic study using semistructured interviews with undergraduate learning assistants in a problem-based introductory mechanics course that incorporates several computational problems. The learning assistants’ prior involvement as students, along with their relatively fewer experiences with programming and physics compared to the faculty instructors, give them a unique perspective on teaching in the course. We present here the results of our analysis: the identification of four approaches that learning assistants make take to teaching computational problems in this course. These approaches, programming focus, learning physics via computation focus, computation as a tool focus, and shifting perceptions of learning focus, provide a lens for understanding the different ways learning assistants perceive computation, the degree to which they take up course-intended learning goals surrounding computation, the factors that may impact the approaches they take, and how we might affect their approaches through training and support.

中文翻译：

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在基于问题的学习课程中教授计算物理问题的助教方法

越来越多的入门物理课程正在寻求纳入“真实的实践”，而这一趋势中的重点是将计算问题纳入课程。这些问题为学生提供了参与物理学家使用的编程实践和数值问题解决方法的机会。了解教师如何解决此类问题对于改进教学和问题设计至关重要。我们在与问题有关的入门力学课程中结合了一些计算问题，使用与本科学习助手的半结构式访谈进行了现象学研究。与教员相比，助教以前是学生，与他们的编程和物理经验相对较少，给他们关于课程教学的独特见解。我们在这里介绍我们的分析结果：确定学习助手在本课程中教授计算问题的四种方法。这些方法编程重点，通过计算重点学习物理，将计算作为工具重点以及对学习重点的转变，为理解助听器感知计算的不同方式，他们围绕计算的课程目标学习目标的程度提供了一个视角，影响他们采取的方法的因素，以及我们如何通过培训和支持来影响他们的方法。