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World Federation of Physics Competitions

News-Letter Nr. 2/2017

A Word from the President

Dear WFPhC-Members, Colleagues and Friends,

This is the second News-Letter we use to publish a few articles in ad-dition to some information.

From February, 20th to 24th there will be our 8th Congress with the topic “Student Com-petitions and their Role in (Gifted) Education”, located in the capital of Austria, beautiful Vienna. You will be informed about this Congress by a “Report” on our home-page http://wettbewerbe.ipn.uni-kiel.de/ipho/wfphc/ some days after the Congress and – in a short way – with our next News-Letter.

In this News-Letter you can find an article from Marianne Korner/Austria about “Cross Age Peer Tutoring” used in the preparation for the International Physics Olympiad.

In addition, one can read an article from Aniket Sule, India, about the 10th International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA), which took place in the city of Bhu-baneswar, India, from December 12th to 18th, 2016.

The third article is a rather short description of the 5th International Experimental Phys-ics Olympiad-2017, situated in the Vitebsk Region of Belarus from November 24th to December 2nd, 2017. You will notice that this description, written by Violetta Medwed, was done some time before this competition started.

With best Seasonal Greetings and with warm regards

(Helmuth Mayr) president


Upcoming International Competitions

► 25. International Conference of Young Scientists (ICYS) in Belgrade, Serbia 19th to 25th April 2018

► 16. European Union Science Olympiad (EUSO) in Ljubljana, Slovenia 28th April to 5th May 2018

► 19. Asian Physics Olympiad (APhO) in Hanoi, Vietna 5th to 13th May 2018

► 6. International Young Naturalists' Tournament (IYNT) in Tbilisi, Georgia 5th to 12th July 2018

► 31. International Young Physicists’ Tournament (IYPT) in Beijing, China 19th to 26th July 2018

► 49. International Physics Olympiad (IPhO) in Lisbon, Portugal 21st to 29th July 2018

(Stefan Petersen) secretary


Is Cross-Age Peer Tutoring a useful approach in the prepa-ration of students for the Physics Olympiad? Marianne Korner Teacher at Secondary School pGRG 15 SSND, Friesgasse 4, 1150 Vienna Trainer of the Austrian Physics Olympiad Leader of Austria at the International Physics Olympiads Researcher and lecturer at the Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Strudlhofgasse 4 A-1090 Vienna [email protected]

Introduction

The Physics Olympiad is the world largest Physics competition for secondary school students. In 2017, 395 students from 85 countries came together to contest in an ex-perimental and in a theoretical exam. Each country has different ways of selecting the best students in physics who are afterwards dispatched to this international competi-tion. Common to all countries is that there are different stages of competitions and that the students undergo several trainings prior to the Olympiad. This is done in Austria, as well.

A question which has to be faced up to for the training is which methodical procedure is most appropriate to enhance the students’ knowledge, their conceptual understand-ing and techniques to deal with the special demands of high-level Olympiad tasks. These special demands can be of various types: firstly, they have to develop tech-niques on how to deal with long texts within the tasks. Further, students have to explore ways how to come to terms with a task (get into a task) and, more importantly, what to do if that doesn't work shortly. At least, skills are necessary to learn how to deal with stress and lack of time. Concerning the subject matter as formulated in the syllabus of the International Physics Olympiad (IPhO), it is evident that training certain concepts and certain computational techniques is required in order to enhance the students’ abilities to handle the tasks of Physics Olympiad at an international level. This is mainly done with tasks from former competitions.

As a matter of fact, regarding the requirements of subject matter and additionally needed soft skills there is a broad consent. A still open question is which ways are useful and apt to foster the development of these requirements optimally. This implies a methodical consideration rather than one on subject matter. Among others, a suitable approach can be Peer Tutoring, respectively Cross-Age Peer Tutoring, as discussed below. Therefore, in this paper CAPT as a teaching method is presented in order to extend the methodical repertoire of teachers and trainers.

The teaching method of Cross-Age Peer Tutoring

Firstly, we need a definition of what Cross-Age Peer Tutoring (CAPT) means. In sci-ence education research there is for example Topping (1996, p. 322), who defines it as follows: “People from similar social groupings who are not professional teachers


helping each other to learn and learning themselves by teaching”. Gaustad specifies that a tutoring process which involves students of different ages is called cross-age peer tutoring (Gaustad, 1993, p. 1). Topping’s definition is more concise than older definitions, which repeatedly perceive tutors as surrogate teachers and do not consider the full range of aspects taking place during the tutoring process.

One should look deeper into the findings of science education research in order to make use of CAPT in the most efficient way:

Robinson et al. figure out that CAPT works because of the tutor-tutee-interaction, which is based on friendship and is therefore closer than the relationship between a teacher and a student (Robinson, Schofield, & Steers-Wentzell, 2005). This implies that the age gap should be moderate.

An early meta-analysis1 conducted by Cohen, Kuhlik and Kuhlik (1982) compared 65 different studies with different foci using ef-fect sizes2. They em-phasize positive ef-fects concerning stu-dents’ achievements, attitudes toward the subject matter and stu-dents’ self-concepts, not only for tutored stu-dents, but for both tu-tors and tutees. A ma-jority of studies showed a better exam-ination performance of tutored students than students in conven-tional classes.

Figure1:Studentsexplainingtoeachothertheirideashowtosolveanexperimentalproblem

Older studies have always stated as clear that the benefit of CAPT is on the tutees’ side. In contrast to this belief, recent studies rather focus on the knowledge gains for tutors, which are surprisingly high (e.g. Robinson et al., 2005). A reason for this can be that, according to Topping (1996), CAPT enhances an intense cognitive processing, which leads to a higher order of conceptual understanding. However, for the concep-tual development it is better if students act in both roles, as tutors and tutees (Topping, 1996).

1 A meta-analysis or meta-study compares the outcomes of different studies. 2The effect size is calculated by dividing two means by the (pooled) standard deviation(s).


The modern definition of CAPT given above matches these findings and complies with the shift of the research focus from tutees towards tutors within the last two decades.

At least, previous studies and meta-studies reveal that peer tutoring as well as CAPT shows bigger effects if the tutoring is well structured, cross-age and if the interventions are not too long (P. A. Cohen, J. A. Kulik, & C.-L. C. Kulik, 1982; Robinson et al., 2005).

Additionally, CAPT supports the three basic needs, which are autonomy, competence and relatedness according to the Self Determination Theory of Motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1993; Niemiec & Ryan, 2009). Thus, CAPT by its design includes components, which enhance motivation.

A review of present literature (e.g. Peter A. Cohen et al., 1982; Robinson et al., 2005; Rohrbeck, Ginsburg-Block, Fantuzzo, & Miller, 2003) reveals that CAPT works in many different contexts. Even science teaching and the context of physics is covered by at least two studies (Howe, Tolmie, Greer, & Mackenzie, 1995; Korner, 2015). Therefore, it seems to be a good idea to use CAPT in the preparation of students for the Physics Olympiad.

Using CAPT to prepare students for the Physics Olympiad

In Austria, the preparation for IPhO takes place in consecutive stages. We start during the school year with courses at schools or at the University of Vienna, which are fol-lowed by three competitions, selecting a decreasing number of students with increas-ing abilities in Physics. The last Austrian competition is accompanied by a 10-day train-ing. The five students who qualify to attend IPhO undergo a final 5-day training prior to the IPhO. This special training is the one I will report about because the two trainers used CAPT additionally to the common methodic repertoire.

The students who have been trained mostly emerge from higher classes. But they are hardly of exactly the same age, the same level of knowledge and of self-confidence. They have experienced different teaching styles of various teachers. Thus, they build a group of peers in the sense of CAPT. One can presume that students as peers will learn from each other in a way which leads to intense discussions and, thus, to a deep insight into the physics problems.

The training started with the distribution of a training task. Students were told to do the task as well as they could. The trainers accompanied the process by providing neces-sary information if needed. In most cases, the outcomes comprised various ap-proaches to solve the given problem. In many cases, the students came differently far


towards the solution (if there be a unique one). At a certain stage, the trainers stopped the process.

The students were told to ex-change their solutions to the problem and study somebody else’s notes. Some time was given to them in order to do so. In the next step they were asked to discuss their ap-proaches and help each other in the case, that one student had a question re-garding subject matter or mathematical routines. There was always one student lead-ing the process in the sense

Figure2:Inthiscasethestudentssplitintotwoworkinggroupsexplainingdifferentideasbythemselvesof a tutor, the other one was listening and asking additional questions, which defined the role of a tutee. In the last step, the roles were changed, which one can call a “re-ciprocal tutoring”.

The trainers supervised this process, identifying critical points within the task or points, which concerned more students in order to give some additional information if neces-sary. The process ended up by a discussion within the group and directed by the train-ers about important features of the given task. Here both students and trainers could emphasize what was important for them.

Outcomes and Discussion

About one week after the above described training, after the IPhO, we interviewed our students one by one in an open and barely structured way (Lamnek, 2005). It was five students, two females and three males, aged 17 to 19. They were asked to explain what they thought of CAPT in the training, how they felt about it and to identify what they had learned about physics and problem-solving skills by talking to one of their peers.

Each of the five students reported that she or he felt fine with CAPT. In the sense of an overall impression such statements give a rough but accurate assessment. The reason for this positive perception can be located in the friendship-like relation between the peers. One figured out that the hurdle to ask again and again if something is not clear at the first try is easier to be taken facing a peer than a teacher. Two of them reported that the discussions were carried out more detailed and one could ask for any technical advice.


The students think that it supported their self-confidence that peers had sometimes committed the same errors in reasoning or mathematics before. They made clear that they improved their physical and mathematical skills discussing how the peers coped with these errors. Each student could identify several situations where he or she had learned “concrete” physics or mathematics by talking to their peers.

Seen from the trainers’ point of view we always noticed vivid and serious discussion among our students. Monitoring these discussions, we picked out points that had to be clarified later. However, it has to be made clear that the trainers still play an important role within the tutoring process in order not to make CAPT look similar to the game of Chinese whispers. Firstly, trainers direct, initiate and accompany the tutoring process. Secondly, trainers have to provide assistance in case that important things are left out by the students, none of the students comes to a proper solution or false concepts are mentioned. In every single situation it is highly recommended for trainers to interfere.

Following these pieces of advice, we can state that our experiences with CAPT for the preparation of students for the Physics Olympiad have been throughout positive. Therefore, we can recommend it as an additional means for every stage of students’ training.

References Cohen, P. A., Kulik, J. A., & Kulik, C.-L. C. (1982). Educational Outcomes of Tutoring - A

Meta-Analysis of Findings. American Educational Research Journal, 19(2), 237-248. Cohen, P. A., Kulik, J. A., & Kulik, C. L. C. (1982). Educational Outcomes of Tutoring: A

Meta-analysis of Findings. American Educational Research Journal, 19(2), 237-248. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1993). Die Selbstbestimmungstheorie der Motivation und ihre

Bedeutung für die Pädagogik. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 39(2), 223-238. Gaustad, J. (1993). Peer and cross-age tutoring. Digest, 79. Howe, C., Tolmie, A., Greer, K., & Mackenzie, M. (1995). Peer collaboration and conceptual

growth in physics: Task influences on children's understanding of heating and cooling. Cognition and Instruction, 13(4), 483-503.

Korner, M. (2015). Cross-Age Peer Tutoring in Physik. Evaluation einer Unterrichtsmethode. (Vol. 186). Berlin: Logos.

Lamnek, S. (2005). Qualitative Sozialforschung. Weinheim, Basel: Beltz Verlag. Niemiec, C. P., & Ryan, R. M. (2009). Autonomy, competence, and relatedness in the

classroom. Theory and Research in Education, 7(2), 133. Robinson, D. R., Schofield, J. W., & Steers-Wentzell, K. L. (2005). Peer and Cross-Age

Tutoring in Math: Outcomes and Their Design Implications. Educational Psychology Review, 17(4), 327-362.

Rohrbeck, C. A., Ginsburg-Block, M. D., Fantuzzo, J. W., & Miller, T. R. (2003). Peer-Assisted Learning Interventions With Elementary School Students: A Meta-Analytic Review. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(2), 240-257.

Topping, K. J. (1996). The effectiveness of peer tutoring in further and higher education: A typology and review of the literature. Higher Education, 32(3), 321-345.


10th International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA)

Aniket Sule Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Mumbai, India Co-convener, IOAA 2016 General Secretary, IOAA The International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA) is a competition for high school students particularly interested in the field of Astronomy. The competi-tion started in 2007 with Thailand as the first host. The constitution, team composition, eligibility rules for the participants etc. for IOAA have been modelled on the rules of IPhO. Initial few editions included teams from about 20 countries. Since 2011, the num-ber of participating teams have been steadily going up. The 10th edition of the event, which was held in the city of Bhubaneswar, India, saw the participation of 48 teams from 41 countries. A total of 221 students and 120 leaders and observers attended the 10th IOAA. IOAA consists of three basic rounds of competition. A theoretical round includes prob-lems of differing length and has a total duration of five hours. In IOAA 2016, the pro-posed theoretical question paper included 5 short questions (10 marks each), 5 inter-mediate questions (20 marks each) and 3 long questions (50 marks each). Thus, the total was 300 marks and this round has 50% weightage in the final score. The second round is called a data analysis round. In this round, students are given astronomical data from real or simulated experiments and they are expected to analyse the data to get meaningful results. This round has 25% weightage and in IOAA 2016, this round included 3 questions of 50 marks each to be solved in four hours. The remaining 25% weightage is assigned to a round to test the knowledge of the night sky and of tele-scopes. This round can be subdivided into multiple parts. In IOAA 2016, this round had three subparts of 50 marks each and had a duration of 30 minutes each. In one part, students were taken inside the city planetarium and were given tasks based on a sim-ulated sky. In the second part, they were given a sky map and were asked to identify certain objects / points. In the last part, the students used a telescope in an open ground at night to solve the assigned tasks.

Some additional rounds of competition are held during the IOAA to encourage collab-orative work amongst students. Since 2009, a team competition is held every year, in which the entire team is assigned a task and they have to work together to complete it. The assigned task may be a particularly challenging problem or can be a practical question of measuring dimensions of a stupa and simulating the sky behind it or it can be an astronomical crossword. The nature of the task and the time allotted to it is left at the discretion of the academic team of each edition. Since 2015, there is also a poster competition, where students can bring a poster of their small research projects and present it during the IOAA.


The preparation of IOAA 2016 started more than a year in advance. In the past, India had hosted several International Olympiads in the western part of the country. Thus, it was decided that IOAA would preferably be held in another part of the country. National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER) in Bhubaneswar agreed to be the host institute for IOAA 2016 with Prof. Subhasis Basak as the convener. A 17-member academic Committee for IOAA was chosen from research institutes across the country and Prof. Anwesh Mazumdar of Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Educa-tion, Mumbai was appointed as the chair of the academic committee. The committee met more than 6 times over the course of the year to design academic tasks for IOAA 2016. The IOAA 2016 event started on 10th December 2016 with an opening ceremony in the evening. On 11th December, the team leaders discussed questions for the sky obser-vation round and team competition. In the planetarium sub-part of the sky observation, the tasks included identifying a number of supernovae, which would appear in the plan-etarium sky, and identifying the position of the celestial pole for an unknown planet. The sky map part had students marking positions of galaxies on a sky map and iden-tifying stars. The night sky round included task of magnitude estimation of stars in star cluster Pleiades using a telescope. All these rounds were conducted by students on 12th December. The team competition had a long problem, which was a mix of theory and data analysis. The question asked the teams to derive the expression for velocity boost in a gravita-tional slingshot, for a simplified framework. Next using this result and the actual posi-tion and the velocity data of the Voyager – 2 spacecraft, while it swung close to Jupiter, the teams were asked to calculate the orbital velocity of Jupiter and hence calculate its orbital parameters like the eccentricity and the position of perihelion point. The teams were given this task on 12th December and were given four days to discuss and submit the solution. On 13th December leaders discussed the theoretical round. A number of short and intermediate questions covered a number of topics from variable stars and photometry to gravitational lens and cosmic microwave background radiation. The first long ques-tion was about calculating the frequency of gravitational waves for a number of different scenarios like a test mass falling onto a regular star, a white dwarf, a neutron star and a black hole. In the last part, students used the gravitational wave discovery graph to actually measure the frequency of gravitational waves and could conclude that this signal could only be explained by a test mass falling onto a black hole. The second question was about characterising exoplanets based on their transits as well as radial velocity data. The students derived expressions for the planets´ size and mass, includ-ing inclination effects, and in the end were also able to give an expression which would act as a definitive indicator on the density of the planet. The third long question was about different types of X-ray telescopes on board Indian satellite named ASTROSAT. Although all these questions were highly appreciated by all leaders, it was proposed


(and agreed) to drop the ASTROSAT question due to concerns of the overall length of the question paper. On 14th December, while the students appeared for the theoretical examination, the leaders discussed data analysis tasks. The first task was finding the orbital period and the orbital radius of a binary pulsar based on the pulse period and the acceleration data. The second task was using the moon’s observable data to find its orbital param-eters and also the distance to the sun. The final task was the reworking of the calibra-tion of the supernova type Ia light-curves to show the students how seemingly different light-curves can be fitted to the same template and how this fact can be used to esti-mate distances of far-off galaxies. This calibration exercise was the foundation stone of the supernova cosmology project, which was awarded the Nobel prize in Physics in 2011. The students attempted these questions on 15th December. All questions and solutions are available at www.ioaa2016.in . During their free days both students and leaders visited local cultural attractions like the Sun Temple at Konark, the Peace Pagoda at Dhauli and other exquisitely carved temples in the city. On 17th December, the 50-member grading team from the host country held their moderation session with the team leaders. The closing ceremony was held on the evening of 18th December. Out of 221 students, 15 students were awarded gold medals, 28 students received silver medals and 50 students received bronze medals. In addition, 48 students were conferred “honourable mention” certificates. The Russian team topped the medal tally with 3 gold medals. In team competition, the Bulgarian team was adjudged as the best followed by Iran and Brazil. A student from India scored the highest total score and was declared absolute winner of IOAA 2016. Detailed results are also available on the website mentioned above.


The 5th Olympiad in Experimental Physics IEPhO - 2017 Violetta Medwed [email protected] The Olympiad in Experimental Physics IEPhO – 2017 will be held from November 24 to December 2, 2017 in The Republic of Belarus (Vitebsk Region).

Five years running this competition has been brought together more than 200 partici-pants from Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Bulgaria, Slovakia and other countries.

The Olympiad format: • 3 competition rounds, 5 hours each • two experimental problems for each competition round • team and individual contest

Participants: secondary school students of 8-11 grade (or equivalent) (14 years and older). The Individual contest is held among the same grade students. The Team contest is held between the teams consisting of eight students and two leaders, separately for 2 leagues:

• the junior league - grades 8 – 9 (14-15 years) • the senior league - grades 10 – 11 (16-17 years).

Incomplete teams of one leader and four students are also accepted. The presence of both age groups is a necessary requirement to participate in the team classification. Tasks:

• The different types have been different tasks: o To measure a single value o To evaluate the dependence of constants o To build a physical model of a phenomenon o To find out the scheme of a black box

• The main idea: The student must invent something

The official languages of the Olympiad are Russian and English.

The organizers: • The Moscow City Department of Education, • The Foundation for the Support of Innovations in Education and Science, • The Center for pedagogical Excellence

The Olympiad is organized at the expense of the participants. Each participant and team leader pays a voluntary fee of 500 Euro. Applications are accepted on the Olym-piad web site (http://www.iepho.com). Materials from previous Olympiads are hosted on the same site. The registration is open until the deadline 2017-10-01.


Contacts: [email protected] 2013: 2014:

2015:

2016:


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