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Students in inquiry science classrooms face an essential tension between sharing new ideas and critically evaluating those ideas. Both sides of this tension pose affective risks that can discourage further discussion, such as the…
We analyze a category of problems that is of interest in many physical situations, including those encountered in introductory physics classes: systems with two well-delineated parts that exchange energy, eventually reaching a shared…
Researchers have argued against deficit-based explanations of students' troubles with mathematical sense-making, pointing instead to factors such as epistemology: students' beliefs about the nature of knowledge and learning can hinder them…
Quantum mechanics is a field often considered very mathematical, abstract, and unintuitive. One way some instructors are hoping to help familiarize their students with these complex topics is to have the students see quantum effects in…
For many students, college physics courses have little or even negative impact on their beliefs about the connection between physics and the everyday world. One way to help students see this connection is to incorporate analysis of science…
This study presents a review of the current state of research on teaching quantum mechanics in secondary and lower undergraduate education. A conceptual approach to quantum mechanics is being implemented in more and more introductory…
We discuss the development, implementation, and assessment of a course for science undergraduates designed to help them develop an awareness and a deeper appreciation of the intellectual demands of physics teaching. The course focused on…
We discuss the clusters of resources that emerge when upper-division students write about electromagnetic fields in linear materials. The data analyzed for this paper comes from students' written tests in an upper-division electricity and…
The case-study teaching method has a long history (starting at least with Socrates), and wide current use in business schools, medical schools, law schools, and a variety of other disciplines. However, relatively little use is made of it in…
Finding general principles underlying brain function has been appealing to scientists. Indeed, in some branches of science like physics and chemistry (and to some degree biology) a general theory often can capture the essence of a wide…
This work presents a tentative discussion of certain aspects of energy behavior in the context of mathematical fluid dynamics. While some observations are made regarding certain patterns in energy behavior under particular conditions, the…
We report results from a study designed to identify links between undergraduate students' views about experimental physics and their engagement in multiweek projects in lab courses. Using surveys and interviews, we explored whether students…
Introductory undergraduate courses in classical physics stress a perspective that can be characterized as realist; from this perspective, all physical properties of a classical system can be simultaneously specified and thus determined at…
Computation has revolutionized science and is gradually making its way into science teaching and learning. However, we currently lack theoretical frameworks to make sense of how students learn to use computation as a disciplinary tool. In…
The nanophysics is halfway between the size scales of quantum mechanics and macroscopic physics governed by the laws of Newton and Einstein. The correct definition of nanophysics is the physics of structures and artefacts with dimensions in…
Statistics is running the risk of appearing irrelevant to today's undergraduate students. Today's undergraduate students are familiar with data science projects and they judge statistics against what they have seen. Statistics, especially…
Student learning of sound waves can be helped through the creation of group-learning classroom materials whose development and design rely on explicit investigations into student understanding. We describe reasoning in terms of sets of…
Research has linked a student's affect to her epistemology (Boaler & Greeno, 2000), but those constructs often apply broadly to a discipline and/or classroom culture. Independently, an emerging line of research shows that a student in a…
We use the theories of identity statuses and communities of practice to describe three different case studies of students finding their paths through undergraduate physics and developing a physics subject-specific identity. Each case study…
This study utilizes a sociocultural interpretation of Self-Determination Theory to better understand the role that learning contexts play in generating student motivation, engagement, and identity. By drawing on previous motivation research…