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To meet National Standards recommended by the National Research Council for high school physics, inservice teachers must be integrated into the physics community. They must be empowered by access to resources of the physics community and by…
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…
Most science classes and in particular Physics are delivered through traditional teaching methods. More specifically, in the traditional stand-and-deliver lecture, the information was transmitted unilaterally from the teacher to the student…
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…
Physics education researchers have developed many evidence-based instructional strategies to enhance physics students' conceptual learning. These strategies have historically been tested using assessments such as the Force Concept Inventory…
Misconception is the difference between a student's idea and his scientific concept. Physics learning needs to be designed by teachers to minimize misconceptions. Different diagnostic tools have been developed and used by researchers to…
Physics has a bad press: it is seen by a majority of people as a boring discipline ever since their High School days. There is no glamour to it, just toil and pain, and for many who engaged in it, the end sight is often unemployment. Could…
A goal of physics is to understand the greatest possible breadth of natural phenomena in terms of the most economical set of basic concepts. However, as the understanding of physics has developed historically, its pedagogy and language have…
This work analyzes the difficulties in learning and teaching Einstein's theory of special relativity. An extensive bibliographic review has been performed, considering articles published in the most relevant journals on science education,…
The traditional pedagogical paradigm in physics is based on a deductive approach. However, with the recent advances in information technology, we are facing a dramatic increase in the amount of readily available information; hence, the…
This paper aims to provide physics teachers with tools to help deepen the understanding of the laws of electromagnetism. The fundamental contributions of our proposal are: a) to use quotes from mythical characters in the history of science…
When we teach physics to prospective scientists and engineers we are teaching more than the "facts" of physics - more, even, than the methods and concepts of physics. We are introducing them to a complex culture - a mode of thinking and the…
We outline here the design, execution, and educational outcomes of an intervention inspired by Einstein's elevator thought experiment, intended to introduce secondary school students to the principle of equivalence, which is at the basis of…
Increasingly, the physics community is attending to issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion, both in language and action. We are more publicly recognizing our individual responsibilities as physicists to address social injustice and…
This paper describes the development of a new university physics course designed to integrate physics, education, research, and community partnerships. The coordinated system of activities links the new course to local community efforts in…
In the Italian education system, secondary students (ages 14-19) are confronted with the foundations of quantum physics during the final term of scientific high school (pre-university year). The Italian Ministry of Education, University and…
We believe that economists have much to learn from educational research practices and related pedagogical innovations in other disciplines, in particular physics education. In this paper we identify three key features of physics education…
During recent collaboration with colleagues to revise our institution's general-education curriculum, I encountered many perceptions of what we mean by the Natural Sciences. I was surprised to find that perceptions of scientific pedagogy…
This paper examines the educational impact of the implementation of "Changes in Energy and Momentum" from the Tutorials in Introductory Physics in five different instructional settings. These settings include (1) a completely computer-based…
This study presents a review of the current state of research on teaching quantum mechanics in secondary and lower undergraduate education. A conceptual approach to quantum mechanics is being implemented in more and more introductory…