Related papers: Upper-Level Physics Students' Perceptions of Physi…
The percentage of women receiving bachelors degrees in physics in the U.S. lags well behind that of men, and women leave the major at higher rates. Achieving equity in physics will mean that women stay in physics at the same rates as men,…
The job of a physicist is to describe Nature. General features, hypotheses and theories help to describe physics phenomena at a more abstract, fundamental level, and are sometimes tacitly assigned some sort of real existence; doing so…
In recent years, computing has become an important part of the way we teach and learn physics. Teachers, both at high school and college levels, now use computational activities in many of their courses. Physics departments are offering…
Over the past decades, the diversity of areas explored by physicists has exploded, encompassing new topics from biophysics and chemical physics to network science. However, it is unclear how these new subfields emerged from the traditional…
Using 6 years of evaluation data we assess the medium- and long-term impacts upon a diverse range of students, teachers, and schools from participating in a programme of protracted university-mentored projects based in cutting-edge space…
A personal perspective on the future challenges of research in particle physics is presented with emphasis on the role of DIS physics in this endeavour.
The amount of published research in Physics Education Research (PER) shows, on one hand, an increasing interest in the design and development of high performance physics teaching strategies, and, on the other hand, it tries to understand…
Some of the reasons for the underrepresentation of women in physics are evident in the reflections of two undergraduate women. Leia is a chemistry major who loves college-level physical chemistry and quantum mechanics but does not identify…
I describe aspects of my life in physics: the name I publish under, great physicists I have known, how I got into quantum foundations, what role I've played in it. My form is autobiographical, but my personal experience may illustrate what…
Very little is known about how the nature of expertise in introductory and advanced courses compares in knowledge-rich domains such as physics. We develop a framework to compare the similarities and differences between learning and patterns…
This paper addresses issues related to the process of informal socialization into physics, particularly for senior graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. Many physicists' careers are built on the relationships they have and develop…
Equations are about more than computing physical quantities or constructing formal models; they are also about understanding. The conceptual systems physicists use to think about nature are made from many different resources, formal and…
Writing is a critical skill for modern science, enabling collaboration, scientific discourse, public outreach, and more. Accordingly, it is important to consider how physicists and astronomers are trained to write. This study aims to…
Students' self-efficacy, interest, and perceived recognition from others have been shown to be very important for the development of their identity in a given field, which is a critical predictor of students' career decisions. Prior…
A primary goal of physics is to create mathematical models that allow both predictions and explanations of physical phenomena. We weave maths extensively into our physics instruction beginning in high school, and the level and complexity of…
Student beliefs in introductory physics courses can influence their course outcomes and retention in STEM disciplines and future career aspirations. This study used survey data from 501 students in the first of two-semester algebra-based…
We use self-reported data from 2011--2014 and determine the academic profile of accepted students at physics graduate programs in the United States. We analyze the accepted students' grade point averages and physics Graduate Record…
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…
Instructional physics labs are critical junctures for many STEM majors to develop an understanding of experimentation in the sciences. Students can acquire useful experimental skills and grow their identities as scientists. However, many…
Case-oriented physics education research - which seeks to refine and develop theory by linking that theory to cases - incorporates distinct practices for selecting data for analysis, generalizing results, and making causal claims.…