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Many studies have investigated students' epistemological framing when solving physics problems. Framing supports students' problem solving as they decide what knowledge to employ and the necessary steps to solve the problem. Students may…
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…
We investigate the dynamics of student behaviors (posture, gesture, vocal register, visual focus) and the substance of their reasoning during collaborative work on inquiry-based physics tutorials. Scherr has characterized student activity…
We present evidence from three student interactions in which two types of common solution methods for solving simple first-order differential equations are used. We describe these using the language of resources, considering epistemic games…
Education is a goal-oriented field. But if we want to treat education scientifically so we can accumulate, evaluate, and refine what we learn, then we must develop a theoretical framework that is strongly rooted in objective observations…
As educators we often ask our physics students to work in groups---on tutorials, during in-class discussions, and on homework, projects, or exams. Researchers have documented the benefits of group work for students' conceptual mastery and…
Group work is becoming increasingly common in introductory physics classrooms. Understanding how students engage in these group learning environments is important for designing and facilitating productive learning opportunities for…
This paper explores role engineering as an effective paradigm for customizing Large Language Models (LLMs) into specialized AI tutors for physics education. We demonstrate this methodology by designing a Socratic physics problem-solving…
In this article, we bring together theories of multimodal communication and computational methods to study how primary school science diagrams combine multiple expressive resources. We position our work within the field of digital…
Developing students' ability to troubleshoot is an important learning outcome for many undergraduate physics lab courses, especially electronics courses. In other work, metacognition has been identified as an important feature of…
Interleaved practice enhances the memory and problem-solving ability of students in undergraduate courses. We introduce a personalized learning tool built on a Large Language Model (LLM) that can provide immediate and personalized attention…
Physics makes powerful use of mathematics, yet the way this use is made is often poorly understood. Professionals closely integrate their mathematical symbology with physical meaning, resulting in a powerful and productive structure. But…
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…
Physics Education Research (PER) applies a scientific approach to the question, "How do our students think about and learn physics?" PER allows us to explore such intellectually engaging questions as, "What does it mean to understand…
We present a case study featuring a first-year bio-science university student using computation to solve a radioactive decay problem and interpret the results. In a semi-structured cognitive interview, we use this case to examine the…
Current conceptions of expert problem solving depict physical/conceptual reasoning and formal mathematical reasoning as separate steps: a good problem solver first translates a physical Current conceptions of quantitative problem-solving…
Computation is becoming an increasingly important part of physics education. However, there are currently few theories of learning that can be used to help explain and predict the unique challenges and affordances associated with…
One of the objectives of the undergraduate physics curriculum is for students to become aware of the connections between formal physical principles and personal experience. However, research has shown that awareness of connections between…
Possibilities for using semantic parsing to estimate the correspondence of text materials to teaching aims, correspondence of test task to theoretical materials and other problems arising during the distance course designing and educational…