Related papers: Just Math: A new epistemic frame
Through a case study, we demonstrate that teachers can tacitly notice student epistemic framing, and that this noticing can prompt instructor action which tips student framing. Our study is based on video data taken during tutorial sections…
Generative AI is rapidly reshaping how physicists teach, learn, and conduct research, yet little is known about how physics faculty are responding to these changes. We interviewed 12 physics professors at a major Scandinavian research…
Physics students can encounter difficulties in physics problem solving as a result of failing to use knowledge that they have but do not perceive as relevant or appropriate. In previous work the authors have demonstrated that some of these…
Effective physics learning, especially in complex topics, requires balancing mathematical formalism with conceptual understanding. Conceptual problem-solving involves connecting math to physical reality, and using an epistemological…
We describe the development of a junior-senior level course for Physics majors designed to teach Mathematica skills in support of their undergraduate coursework, but also to introduce students to modern research level results. Standard…
This paper introduces a new spreadsheet tool for adoption by high school or college level physics teachers who use common assessments in a pre-instruction/post-instruction mode to diagnose student learning and teaching effectiveness. The…
Mathematics is an essential element of physics problem solving, but experts often fail to appreciate exactly how they use it. Math may be the language of science, but math-in-physics is a distinct dialect of that language. Physicists tend…
Nowadays interactive digital scientific environments have become an integral part of scientific computing in solving various scientific tasks in research, but also STEM education. We introduce SageMath or shortly Sage -- a free open…
Advances in machine learning (ML) offer new possibilities for science education research. We report on early progress in the design of an ML-based tool to analyze students' mechanistic sensemaking, working from a coding scheme that is…
In their study of physics beyond the first year of University -- termed upper-division in the US, many of students' primary learning opportunities come from working long, complex back-of-the-book style problems, and from trying to develop…
We outline an unified introduction to the evolution equations of classical and quantum systems intended for a high school students audience. The attempt consists in circumventing the lack of mathematical knowledge with the use of simplified…
Although the scientific digital library is growing at a rapid pace, scholars/students often find reading Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) literature daunting, especially for the math-content/formula. In this paper,…
Research on nontraditional laboratory (lab) activities in physics shows that students often expect to verify predetermined results, as takes place in traditional activities. This understanding of what is taking place, or epistemic framing,…
Understanding and reasoning about physics is an important ability of intelligent agents. We develop the PHYRE benchmark for physical reasoning that contains a set of simple classical mechanics puzzles in a 2D physical environment. The…
A common learning goal for modern physics instructors is for students to recognize a difference between the experimental uncertainty of classical physics and the fundamental uncertainty of quantum mechanics. Our studies suggest this…
Mathematics is a critical part of much scientific research. Physics in particular weaves math extensively into its instruction beginning in high school. Despite much research on the learning of both physics and math, the problem of how to…
Many physics instructors aim to support student sensemaking in their classrooms. However, this can be challenging since instances of sensemaking tend to be short-lived, with students often defaulting to approaches based on answer-making or…
While there exists a significant number of web interactives for introductory physics, students are almost never shown the computer code that generates these interactives even when the physics parts of these programs are relatively simple.…
Students' difficulties in quantum mechanics may be the result of unproductive framing rather than a fundamental inability to solve the problems or misconceptions about physics content. Using the theoretical lens of epistemological framing,…
Understanding the mechanisms of student sensemaking while navigating the physics problem-solving process can play an important role in developing approaches to helping students become proficient problem solvers. Since most prior studies on…