Related papers: Blending physical knowledge with mathematical form…
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…
In the evolving landscape of education, robotics has emerged as a powerful tool for fostering creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills among students of all ages. This innovative approach to learning seamlessly integrates…
Energy is an abstract science concept, so the ways that we think and talk about energy rely heavily on ontological metaphors: metaphors for what kind of thing energy is. Two commonly used ontological metaphors for energy are energy as a…
Students' difficulties in quantum mechanics may be the result of unproductive framing and not a fundamental inability to solve the problems or misconceptions about physics content. We observed groups of students solving quantum mechanics…
This is a report on a qualitative study of students' learning where a physics computer simulation session is used to supplement lectures on the topic. Drawing on phenomenography as the analytical framework, the students' learning-focuses…
In a companion paper, we discuss students' ability to take advantage of what they learn from a solved problem and transfer their learning to solve a quiz problem that has different surface features but the same underlying physics…
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…
A common hope of many physics educators and researchers is that students leave the course with a stronger sense that physics is relevant to them than when they entered the course. Multiple survey measures have attempted to measure shifts in…
Background: Software modelling is a creative yet challenging task. Modellers often find themselves lost in the process, from understanding the modelling problem to solving it with proper modelling strategies and modelling tools. Students…
Most educational literature on conceptual change concerns the process by which introductory students acquire scientific knowledge. However, with modern developments in science and technology, the social significance of learning successive…
This paper describes a network of teachers and students who form a living system of education at all levels and achieve high standards. The key process of the network is the process of effective learning by inquiry. Physics is distinguished…
Momentum exists in the physics community for integrating computation into the undergraduate curriculum. One of many benefits would be preparation for computational research. Our investigation poses the question of which computational skills…
Single particle models are sufficient for many topics in introductory physics courses, but become misleading when applied to situations involving changes in internal energy. This paper merges two parallel attempts to reform the teaching of…
When students are learning to use math in physics, one of the most important ideas they need to learn is that equations are not just calculational tools; they represent relationships between physical variables that change together (covary).…
Traditional high-stakes summative assessments--timed, in-class exams accounting for a large percentage of the term's overall grade--have often received criticism from the educational community. Such assessments tend to prize a particular…
Research in cognitive science has provided extensive evidence of human cognitive ability in performing physical reasoning of objects from noisy perceptual inputs. Such a cognitive ability is commonly known as intuitive physics. With…
The University of Maryland (UMD) Biology Education and Physics Education Research Groups are investigating students' views on the role of physics in introductory biology courses. This paper presents data from an introductory course that…
Computation is a central aspect of modern science and engineering work, and yet, computational instruction has yet to fully pervade university STEM curricula. In physics, we have begun to integrate computation into our courses in a variety…
Training students in basic concepts of physics, such as the ones related to mass, volume, or density, is much more complicated than just stating the underlying definitions and laws. One of the reasons for this is that most students have…
The human mind is endowed with innate primordial perceptions such as space, distance, motion, change, flow of time, matter. The field of cognitive science argues that the abstract concepts of mathematics are not Platonic, but are built in…