Related papers: Methods for Analyzing Pathways through a Physics M…
This research uses 10 years of institutional data at a large public university in the USA to investigate trends in the undergraduate majors students declare, drop, and earn degrees, especially comparing physics to other disciplines. We find…
I believe that most teachers develop a belief in a set of pedagogical practices. As we teach, we try different ways to teach topics and then judge how successful the methods were. After several years, we have a compilation of techniques in…
Diversity has an important, multifaceted role in the success of education. I have used a corpus analysis of the first ten years of Physical Review Physics Education Research to investigate the diversity, broadly defined, of physics…
Is physics education research based on a representative sample of students? To answer this question we skimmed physics education research papers from three journals for the years 1970 - 2015 looking for the number of research subjects, the…
This article describes an undergraduate physics module at a university in England that places year 3 student physicists in secondary school classrooms for a semester. This is done as a way of introducing them to the occupation of secondary…
This resource letter intends to provide physics instructors - particularly graduate student teaching assistants - at the introductory university level with a small but representative collection of resources to acquire a familiarity with…
"So what do you do? I mean, what do you actually do?" This is one of the most common questions one theoretical physicist receives from her students, and is representative of a common curiosity among aspiring physicists. Students often…
Diagrams are ubiquitous in physics, especially in physics education and physics problem solving. Problem solvers may generate diagrams to orient to a scenario, to organize information, to directly extract an answer, or as a tool of…
Even though there has been a tremendous amount of research done in how to help students learn physics, students are still coming away missing a crucial piece of the puzzle: why bother with physics? Students learn fundamental laws and how to…
We discuss and analyze the fact that physics is generally losing its ability to captivate students who may possess the potential to enhance the quality of our future in this age of technology. We have tried to investigate the reasons behind…
Physics outreach programs provide a critical context for informal experiences that promote the transition from new student to contributing physicist. Prior studies have suggested a positive link between participation in informal physics…
We address the question "How do students make sense of Physics from the point of view of constituting physics knowledge?". A phenomenographic study is described as a result of which we present six qualitatively different ways in which…
Physics is considered as one of the most prevailing and problematic subjects by the students in the realm of science. Students perceived physics as a difficult subject during high school days and become more evasive when they reach college.…
Physical quantities and physical dimensions are among the first concepts encountered by students in their undergraduate career. In this pedagogical review, I will start from these concepts and, using the powerful tool of dimensional…
It is now widely believed that research should be an essential and integral part of under-graduate studies. In recent years there has been a conscious effort to bring research opportunities to the physics under-graduates in India. We argue…
A national survey of physics faculty was conducted to investigate the prevalence and nature of computational instruction in physics courses across the United States. 1246 faculty from 357 unique institutions responded to the survey. The…
Research has shown that it is challenging to change departmental culture to support the adoption of transformed teaching practices. Michigan State University is working to transform its introductory physics courses by engaging faculty in…
National studies conducted over many years show that, while most Americans are interested in science and support federal funding of scientific research, the scientific literacy of the public is very low. Why this situation exists and who is…
Earning any advanced degree in physics or astronomy is an arduous process and major accomplishment. However, not every journey to the Ph.D. is paved equally. Every year, there are hundreds of students who earn terminal master's degrees in…
We present two programs that address needs to better prepare graduate students for their roles as professional physicists, particularly in the areas of teaching and education research. The two programs, Preparing Future Physicists (PFP) and…