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This review article provides an overview of research on the topic of gender equity in educational physics labs. As many institutions and instructors seek to evolve or transform physics lab learning, it is important that changes are made…
We examine the difficulties that introductory physics students, undergraduate physics majors, and physics graduate students have with concepts related to conductors and insulators covered in introductory physics by giving written tests and…
Questions of participant understanding of the nature of an activity have been addressed in anthropology and sociolinguistics with the concepts of frames and framing. For example, a student may frame a learning activity as an opportunity for…
Historically, the implementation of research-based assessments (RBAs) has been a driver of education change within physics and helped motivate adoption of interactive engagement pedagogies. Until recently, RBAs were given to students…
Physics Education Research (PER) practitioners have engaged in substantial curriculum development and dissemination work in recent years. Yet, it appears that this work has had minimal influence on the fundamental teaching practices of…
Physics faculty care about their students learning physics content. In addition, they usually hope that their students will learn some deeper lessons about thinking critically and scientifically. They hope that as a result of taking a…
Introductory algebra-based physics courses frequently feature multiple student major populations in the same course section, however, different majors' requirements may impact students' motivations towards different aspects of the course…
This article outlines a comprehensive redesign of an introductory physics laboratory course aimed at promoting active student engagement, enhancing scientific experimental skills and the development of expert-like attitudes. The redesign…
This paper reports on an investigation into the correlations between students' understandings of introductory astronomy concepts and the correctness and coherency of their written responses to targeted Lecture-Tutorial questions. We…
Implementing a laboratory activity involves a complex interplay among learning goals, available resources, feedback about the existing course, best practices for teaching, and an overall philosophy about teaching labs. Building on our…
Using 6 years of evaluation data we assess the medium- and long-term impacts upon a diverse range of students, teachers, and schools from participating in a programme of protracted university-mentored projects based in cutting-edge space…
Measurement uncertainty is an important topic in the undergraduate laboratory curriculum. Previous research on student thinking about experimental measurement uncertainty has focused primarily on introductory-level students' procedural…
Students' attitudes and approaches to problem solving in physics can greatly impact their actual problem solving practices and also influence their motivation to learn and ultimately the development of expertise. We developed and validated…
Sliding friction is usually introduced in high school, but rarely through activities in laboratory. A qualitative introduction to friction is presented by proposing exploration of different kind of materials in order to suggest which…
We use the theories of identity statuses and communities of practice to describe three different case studies of students finding their paths through undergraduate physics and developing a physics subject-specific identity. Each case study…
Various active learning methods have been developed for introductory physics, and these methods are increasingly being adopted by instructors. However, instructors often do not implement these methods exactly as was originally intended by…
Assessing student performance becomes challenging when course enrollment becomes very large (~10^4 students). As part of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in introductory physics offered by Georgia Tech in 2013, students submitted video…
In this article we argue how the use of structured laboratory guides are pedagogically inadequate for meaningful learning. Subsequently, an approach to laboratory activities in accordance with scientific work and the constructivist vision…
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…
A central aim of physics education research is to understand the processes of learning and use that understanding to inform instruction. To this end, researchers often conduct studies to measure the effect of classroom interventions on…