Expansive framing, which positions students as participants in larger
conversations that span time, place, people and disciplines, can be a valuable approach
for designing curricula and learning experiences, to help students learn physics through
an interdisciplinary approach. This chapter reports on the efforts to use expansive
framing as a guiding principle while transforming and revitalizing an introductory
physics laboratory class. This chapter, describes student experiences with two central
elements of the lab course that are strongly influenced by the concept of expansive
framing and related to interdisciplinary learning. First, we sought to incorporate and
emphasize experiences related to the students’ real-world and professional experiences,
such as connections between biology and physics, that will be interesting for the
health-science majors who take the lab. Second, we sought to promote discussions
between students and their graduate student instructors about the epistemology of
experimental physics, which we refer to as the nature of science, which is an important
interdisciplinary goal for the lab class. We explore the need, design, and
implementation of these two elements of the lab course by analyzing student interviews
and coursework. Consequently, we propose that using expansive framing for the design
of student learning should be considered a best practice for implementing introductory
college physics laboratory courses when seeking to adopt an interdisciplinary approach
to student learning.
Keywords: Expansive framing, Nature of science, Physics education.
