Related papers: Coordination of Mathematics and Physical Resources…
Pre-college mathematics modeling instruction often frames mathematics as being separated from reasoning about the real world -- and commonly treats reasoning mathematically and reasoning about the real-world context as separate stages of a…
Significant obstacles prevent large, university-level, introductory physics courses from effectively teaching problem-solving skills. We describe our program for integrating three internet-based "teaching-while-quizzing" tools to address…
We describe how graduate students categorize introductory mechanics problems based on the similarity of their solutions. Graduate students were asked at the end of a teaching assistant training class to categorize problems from their own…
Among the many decisions to be made in their teaching practice, physics teachers must decide how to explain each particular phenomenon to students. This study explores student teachers' (STs) decision-making process when presented with…
An accurate calculation of the total polarization charge density in a plasma is essential for a self-consistent determination of the electric field. Yet, for a magnetized plasma, there are two different polarization paradoxes that are…
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…
The Young Physicists' Tournament (YPT) inspires high-school students to immerse themselves into an inquiry process closely resembling the real physics research. Using questionnaires' replies from the students and their teachers engaged in…
The application of physics formulas is a fundamental human capability in numerical reasoning. While existing datasets often rely on implicit mathematical knowledge, they rarely explicitate the underlying formulas. To address this, we…
Measurement uncertainty plays a critical role in the process of experimental physics. It is useful to be able to assess student proficiency around the topic to iteratively improve instruction and student learning. For the topic of…
Student attitudes and approaches to problem solving can impact how well they learn physics. Prior research in the US using a validated Attitude and Approaches to Problem Solving (AAPS) survey suggests that there are major differences…
This paper presents a photo elicitation project that invites students to explore their identities in STEM and surface the cultural wealth they bring into the physics classroom. Grounded in critical race theory, educational theory, and…
Computation, the use of a computer to solve, simulate, or visualize a physical problem, has revolutionized how physics research is done. Computation is used widely to model systems, to simulate experiments, and to analyze data. Yet, in most…
Covariational reasoning -- reasoning about how changes in one quantity relate to changes in another quantity -- has been examined extensively in mathematics education research. Little research has been done, however, on covariational…
Physics Education Research frequently investigates what students studying physics do on small time scales (e.g. single courses, observations within single courses), or post-education time scales (e.g., what jobs do physics majors get?) but…
There is consistent and growing evidence that physics instruction disproportionately harms female students' self-efficacy, their beliefs about their ability to learn and do physics. This harm is problematic because self-efficacy supports…
We developed a survey to probe student understanding of quantum mechanics concepts at the beginning of graduate instruction. The survey was administered to 202 graduate students in physics enrolled in first-year quantum mechanics courses…
The concept of potential difference is fundamental to understanding electricity in upper secondary physics courses. However, students often find it challenging to grasp. To address this, we designed and implemented a test aimed at assessing…
High school science classrooms across the United States are answering calls to make computation a part of science learning. The problem is that there is little known about the barriers to learning that computation might bring to a science…
In response to national calls to better align physics laboratory courses with the way physicists engage in research, we have developed an epistemology and expectations survey to assess how students perceive the nature of physics experiments…
As part of large-scale assessment project at Texas Tech University, we studied the effect of problem format on students responses to quiz questions. The same problem was written in multiple formats and administered as a quiz in the large…