Related papers: The Case for Dynamic Models of Learners' Ontologie…
The terms 'semantics' and 'ontology' are increasingly appearing together with 'explanation', not only in the scientific literature, but also in organizational communication. However, all of these terms are also being significantly…
In this paper we investigate the extent to which students' problem-solving behaviors change as a result of working on multi-faceted, context-rich problems. During the semester, groups of two to three students work on several problems that…
Thermodynamics could be seen as an expression of physics at a high epistemic level. As such, its potential as an inductive bias to help machine learning procedures attain accurate and credible predictions has been recently realized in many…
In introductory physics laboratory instruction, students often expect to confirm or demonstrate textbook physics concepts (Wilcox & Lewandowski, 2017; Hu & Zwickl, 2017; Hu & Zwickl, 2018). This expectation is largely undesirable: labs that…
Learning physics is a context dependent process. I consider a broader interdisciplinary problem of where differences in understanding and reasoning arise. I suggest the long run effects a multiple choice based learning system as well as…
We are investigating cognitive issues in learning quantum mechanics in order to develop effective teaching and learning tools. The analysis of cognitive issues is particularly important for bridging the gap between the quantitative and…
"Mathematicians, like physicists, are pushed by a strong fascination. Research in mathematics is hard, it is intellectually painful even if it is rewarding, and you would not do it without some strong urge." [D. Ruelle]. We shall give some…
Experimental activities are an essential part of physics education. In addition to conveying scientific knowledge, they play a significant role in developing scientific literacy, inquiry skills, and critical thinking. In today's world,…
Computational thinking in physics has many different forms, definitions, and implementations depending on the level of physics, or the institution it is presented in. In order to better integrate computational thinking in introductory…
Making meaning with math in physics requires blending physical conceptual knowledge with mathematical symbology. Students in introductory physics classes often struggle with this, but it is an essential component of learning how to think…
Since it was first published 30 years ago, Chi et al.'s seminal paper on expert and novice categorization of introductory problems led to a plethora of follow-up studies within and outside of the area of physics [Chi et al. Cognitive…
Learning to think like a physicist (LTP) is often cited as a central goal of graduate physics education, yet what this means in practice and the extent to which physics graduate education prepares students to develop LTP and view LTP as…
We investigated the common difficulties that students have with concepts related to rotational and rolling motion covered in the introductory physics courses. We compared the performance of calculus- and algebra-based introductory physics…
The modeling theory of instruction is widely applied and highly successful in high-school instruction, and seldom in university physics. One reason is lack of familiarity with models in the physics classroom. Ongoing curriculum development…
Researchers in physics education have advocated both for including modeling in science classrooms as well as promoting student engagement with sensemaking. These two processes facilitate the generation of new knowledge by connecting to…
Contextuality is a central feature of quantum theory, traditionally understood as the impossibility of reproducing quantum measurement statistics using noncontextual ontological models. We study classical ontological descriptions in which a…
Understanding issues involved in expertise in physics problem solving is important for helping students become good problem solvers. In part 1 of this article, we summarize the research on problem-solving relevant for physics education…
This paper proposes a novel perspective on learning, positing it as the pursuit of dynamical invariants -- data combinations that remain constant or exhibit minimal change over time as a system evolves. This concept is underpinned by both…
Recalling the state of the art in the interpretation of quantum physics, this paper emphasizes that one cannot simply add a collapse parameter to the Schr\~A{\P}dinger equation in order to solve the measurement problem. If one does so, one…
Ontology citation, the practice of referring the ontology in a similar fashion the scientific community routinely follows in providing the bibliographic references to other scholarly works, has not received enough attention it supposed to.…