Related papers: Making Space to Sensemake: Epistemic Distancing in…
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…
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…
In response to national calls to better align physics laboratory courses with the way physicists engage in research, we have developed an epistemology and expectations survey to assess how students perceive the nature of physics experiments…
Physics in schools is distinctly different from, and struggles to capture the excitement of, university research-level work. Initiatives where students engage in independent research linked to cutting-edge physics within their school over…
Symbolic equations are one of the many representations used in physics. Understanding these representations is important for students because they are how students access knowledge in physics. In this paper I build off of the work by Redish…
Technology has changed both our way of life and the way in which we learn. Students now attend lectures with laptops and mobile phones, and this situation is accentuated in the case of students on Computer Science degrees, since they…
Many institutions are changing the focus of their introductory physics labs from verifying physics content towards teaching students about the skills and nature of science. As instruction shifts, so too will the ways students approach and…
"Self-diagnosis tasks" aim at fostering diagnostic behavior by explicitly requiring students to present diagnosis as part of the activity of reviewing their problem solutions. We have been investigating the extent to which introductory…
As research-based self-paced e-learning tools become increasingly available, a critical issue educators encounter is implementing strategies to ensure that all students engage with them as intended. Here, we discuss the effectiveness of…
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,…
Scientific communication inside and outside the classroom is the main means for providing an adequate understanding of how science and technological innovation relate to society. In order to achieve this goal, it is important to explore new…
There are diverse teaching methodologies to promote both collaborative and individual work in undergraduate physics courses. However, few educational studies seek to understand how students learn and apply new knowledge through open-ended…
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…
This study investigates how an urban, high school physics class responded to the inclusion of a classroom set of iPads and associated applications, such as screencasting. The participatory roles of students and the expressions of their…
In recent years there has been growing evidence that even after teaching designed to address the learning difficulties dictated by literature, many physics learners fail to create the proper reasoning chains that connect the fundamental…
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…
Instructional labs are being transformed to better reflect authentic scientific practice, often by removing aspects of pedagogical structure to support student agency and decision-making. We explored how these changes impact men's and…
Although most teachers acknowledge the importance of taking investigative approached in students' science learning experiences, implementing them in high-school classes can be challenging for teachers. In this work, we analyzed data from…
Many researchers and textbooks have promoted the use of rigid prescribed strategies for encouraging development of expert-like problem-solving behavior in novice students. The University of British Columbia's introductory algebra-based…
Assessment tasks provide opportunities for students to make sense of novel contexts in light of their existing ideas. Consequently, investigations in physics education research have extensively developed and analyzed assessments that…