Physics students enter our classroom with significant learning experiences and learning goals that are just as important as their prior knowledge. Consequently, they have expectations about how they should be taught and what it means to learn. The instructor enters the same classroom and presents the students with materials and assessments that he/she believes reflect his/her learning goals for the students. When students encounter a reformed physics class, there is often a “misalignment” between students’ perceptions, and learning goals the instructor designed for the students. I want to propose that alignment can be achieved in a reformed physics class by considering it as a complex dynamical system. By paying attention to positive feedback loops, we can achieve alignment between students’ expectations and the instructor’s learning goals.
