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Researchers have pinpointed recognition from others as one of the most important dimensions of students' science and engineering identity. Studies, however, have found gender biases in students' recognition of their peers, with inconsistent…
Undergraduate physics education has greatly benefited from the introduction of computational activities. However, despite the benefits computation has delivered, we still lack a complete understanding of the computationally integrated…
We discuss the categorization of 20 quantum mechanics problems by physics professors and undergraduate students from two honors-level quantum mechanics courses. Professors and students were asked to categorize the problems based upon…
This study aims to understand how undergraduate physics majors develop an interest in specific subfields. We examine interest formation through the lens of Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT) by exploring four key SCCT constructs:…
Explication and reflection on expert vs. novice considerations within the problem-solving process characterize a cognitive apprenticeship approach for the development of expert-like problem solving practices. In the context of grading, a…
A difficult challenge in physics education is to design professional development programs for teachers, which can lead to fundamental changes in their practise. We report all activities for physics teachers in the context of the National…
Computation is intertwined with essentially all aspects of physics research and is invaluable for physicists' careers. Despite its disciplinary importance, integration of computation into physics education remains a challenge and, moreover,…
From industry to government to academia, attracting and retaining science, technology, engineering, and mathematics majors is recognized as a key element of the 21$^{\text{st}}$ century knowledge economy. The ability to retain students…
In the 60s of the last century the few courses of History of physics in Physics degree were held by scholars who, apart from a few exceptions, did not have a specific research background in the field. Some activities, books, social…
Both the basic educational contents for students and study programs for science teachers include several topics in physics and astronomy, from the simplest ones to others as advanced as nuclear fusion to explain stellar evolution and…
Many undergraduate and graduate physics students participate in some form of public engagement throughout the course of their studies, often through groups supported by physics departments and universities. These informal teaching and…
In this paper, we describe two paradigms in physics education research (PER): recurrence-oriented and case-oriented PER. We connect theory on research methodologies in the social sciences to interviews with physics education researchers and…
In physics, there is the prevailing intuition that we are part of a unique external world, and that the goal of physics is to understand and describe this world. This assumption of the fundamentality of objective reality is often seen as a…
Increasing numbers of physicists engage in research activities that address biological questions from physics perspectives or strive to develop physics insights from active biological processes. The on-going development and success of such…
What does it mean to "make sense" of physics? It's not a simple question. Most people have an intuitive feeling for when things do (or do not) make sense to them. But, putting this feeling into words--especially actionable words--is another…
While the positive outcomes of undergraduate research experiences (UREs) have been extensively categorized, the mechanisms for those outcomes are less understood. Through lightly structured focus group interviews, we have extracted 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 prior work has shown that…
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…
Most introductory quantum physics instructors would agree that transitioning students from classical to quantum thinking is an important learning goal, but may disagree on whether or how this can be accomplished. Although (and perhaps…
An important goal of graduate physics core courses is to help students develop expertise in problem solving and improve their reasoning and meta-cognitive skills. We explore the conceptual difficulties of physics graduate students by…