< back to People << back to FrontPage

Luke D. Conlin

Contact Info:

Toll Physics Building, Room 1322

DESEP office in Benjamin basement

Ph: (301)405-6185

Mo: (240)271-7665

Email: luke.conlin@gmail.com

Blog: http://thegrandperspective.blogspot.com

About Me:

My curriculum vitae: (pdf)

I graduated from Tufts University in 2000 with a B.S. in Astrophysics. I received high honors for my thesis on cosmic evolution. I taught high school physics for five years in Massachusetts before coming to Maryland. Currently, I am seeking a Ph.D. in Science Education from the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. I have worked under the Progress in Learning Physics K-16 grant, studying the dynamics of student behaviors and verbal reasoning. I also have supervised student teachers in high school physics classrooms, helping them attend to student thinking.

Currently I'm working on the (MSP)^2 project. We are working with grade school teachers in Prince George's County to teach science through inquiry, and doing research on how that plays out.

Outside the classroom walls, I enjoy performing and writing music, playing electric and upright bass. I continue to play in several local bands.

Here's the prezi from my dissertation defense

Research Interests:

Education

Student reasoning, framing, and behavior
Modeling student thinking
The conceptual, epistemological, and affective affordances of humor in the Science Classroom
Affect and humor in physics education
Complex systems approaches to education

Philosophy

Causality and mechanism
Philosophy of humor
Philosophy of physics

Currently Working On:

Minority Student Pipeline Math & Science Partnership (MSP^2)
Dissertation on how groups of students build shared understandings during scientific inquiry discussions

Past Projects

Co-instructor for Physics 115: Inquiry Into Physics. (syllabus)
Open Source Tutorials
Behavior and Reasoning of students in physics tutorials

Projects on hold

Finding the Mind, i.e. developing heuristics for empirically informing the unit of cognition dynamically at both the individual and group levels
Extending the study of personal epistemology to include social epistemology, i.e., views and stances related to the social and interpersonal nature of knowledge & understanding
The group according to Vygotsky: under what conditions may a group play the role of the "expert" in setting up a zone of proximal development
Causal semantics of physics equations
The roles of humor and affect in learning

Select Papers, Posters & Talks

-Publications:

Conlin, L.D., Gupta, A., & Hammer, D. (2010). Framing and resource activation: Bridging the cognitive-situative divide using a dynamic unit of cognitive analysis. In S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 19-24). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. Available at http://palm.mindmodeling.org/cogsci2010/cogsci10_proceedings.pdf.
Conlin, L.D., Gupta, A., & Hammer, D. (2010). Where to find the mind: Identifying the scale of cognitive dynamics. In K. Gomez, L. Lyons, & J. Radinsky, (Eds.) Learning in the Disciplines: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS 2010) - Volume 1, Full Papers (pp. 277-284). Chicago, IL: International Society of the Learning Sciences. Preprint available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.0491
Conlin, L. D. (2009, February). For the new teacher: Finding methods in madness. The Physics Teacher, 125-126.
Conlin, L. D. (2009, February). Inscrutable Intelligence? [Letter to the editor]. Scientific American, p. A10.
Conlin, L. D., Gupta, A., Scherr, R. E., & Hammer, D. (2007). The Dynamics of students’ behaviors and reasoning during collaborative physics tutorial sessions. Proceedings of the Physics Education Research Conference, 24(15), 69-72. http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.0323

Conference Presentations:

Conlin, L.D., Powell, K., & Elby, A. (2011, June 4). De-emphasizing science vocabulary with English language learners. Poster presented at the 2011 Meeting of the Jean Piaget Society.

Jaber, L., Conlin, L.D., & Hammer, D. (2011, June 3). The coupling of emotion, epistemology, and substance of students’ reasoning in physics. Paper presented at the 2011 Meeting of the Jean Piaget Society. (ppt) (pdf)

Jaber, L., Richards, J., Conlin, L.D., & Hammer, D. (2011, April 4). Fostering generative inquiry in the science class: The role of affect. Paper presented at the 2011 Meeting of the National Association of Research on Science Teaching.

Conlin, L.D., Gupta, A., & Elby, A. (2011, January 12). The coupling of emotion, epistemology, and substance of students’ reasoning in physics. Paper presented at the 2011 Winter Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers. (pdf)

Conlin, L.D., Gupta, A., & Hammer, D. (2010, August 12). Framing and resource activation: Bridging the cognitive-situative divide

using a dynamic unit of cognitive analysis. Paper presented at the 32nd annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. (pdf)

Conlin, L.D., Gupta, A., & Hammer, D. (2010, July 1). Where to find the mind: Identifying the scale of cognitive dynamics. Paper

presented at the 2010 International Conference of the Learning Sciences.

Conlin, L.D., Gupta, A., & Hammer, D. (2010, March 23). Bridging the cognitive and situative accounts of cognition with a resources framework. Presented at the 2010 Annual Conference of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching. (pdf)

Conlin, L. D., Gupta, A., Scherr, R. E., & Hammer, D. (2008, January 20). Framing and Reasoning in Tutorials over the Course of a Semester. Poster Presentation, Baltimore, MD. (pdf)

Conlin, L. D., Gupta, A., Scherr, R. E., & Hammer, D. (2007, August 1). Students' Behavior and Reasoning during Physics Tutorials. Poster Presentation, University of North Carolina - Greensboro. (pdf)

Luke Conlin