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In an Introductory Physics for Life Science (IPLS) course that leverages authentic biological examples, student ideas about entropy as "disorder" or "chaos" come into contact with their ideas about the spontaneous formation of organized…
Energy is no doubt an intuitive concept. Following a previous analysis on the nature of elementary particles and associated elementary quantum fields, the peculiar status and role of energy is scrutinised further at elementary and larger…
A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas gives the concept of field energy a prominent role in the physical sciences sections of its recommendations for K-12 science education. I examine what…
Environmental Education (EE) is vital for shaping citizens who understand and value sustainability as an epistemological and practical alternative to mitigate current environmental issues. This research was prompted by the exploration of…
A common hope of many physics educators and researchers is that students leave the course with a stronger sense that physics is relevant to them than when they entered the course. Multiple survey measures have attempted to measure shifts in…
A common feature of the recent calls for reform of the undergraduate biology curriculum has been for better coordination between biology and the courses from the allied disciplines of mathematics, chemistry, and physics. Physics has lagged…
In response to increasing calls for the reform of the undergraduate science curriculum for life science majors and pre-medical students (Bio2010, Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians, Vision & Change), an interdisciplinary team has…
Physics education research has probed for the relevance of physics in students' everyday lives. Attitudinal and epistemological surveys have asked students if they think of or use physics in their daily lives. We have previously documented…
Life has a special status, it even has its own science: biology. In many ways, the logic of life seems to differ from that of atoms, molecules, planets, or any other `inanimate object'. However, life is increasingly measured using…
As part of a longitudinal study into identity development in upper-level physics students, a phenomenographic research method was used to examine students' perceptions of what it means to be a physicist. The results revealed four different…
A particular science is not only defined by its object of study, but also by the point of view and method under which it considers that same object. Taking space and time as an illustrative example, our main aim here is to bring out an…
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…
The purpose of this brief note is that of discussing the meaning of the uncertainty relations involving energy and time in quantum mechanics by means of a reading of the classical works on the subject. This was written for undergraduate…
With an investigation into how students in a physics Master of science program make sense of their whole first year study experience in one of the years following a programme reform, we try to offer insights and advice to consider when…
Energy is an abstract science concept, so the ways that we think and talk about energy rely heavily on ontological metaphors: metaphors for what kind of thing energy is. Two commonly used ontological metaphors for energy are energy as a…
As part of a longitudinal study into identity development in upper-level physics students, we used a phenomenographic research method to examine students' perceptions of what it means to be a physicist. The results revealed four different…
For this study, we compared the attitudes and beliefs about science of physical science (physics and mathematics) and life science (biochemistry and biology) students at the beginning of their university degrees using the CLASS (Colorado…
Much recent work in physics education research has focused on ontological metaphors for energy, particularly the substance ontology and its pedagogical affordances. The concept of negative energy problematizes the substance ontology for…
Prior research has demonstrated how the realist perspectives of classical physics students can translate into specific beliefs about quantum phenomena when taking an introductory modern physics course. Student beliefs regarding the…
The Physics Education Group at the University of Washington is examining the extent to which students are able to use graphs of potential energy vs. position to infer kinematic and dynamic quantities for a system. The findings indicate that…