Related papers: In a physics curriculum only introductory physics …
We discuss research involving the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) to evaluate one aspect of the pedagogical content knowledge of teaching assistants (TAs): the knowledge of introductory students' alternate conceptions…
We describe a course designed to help future educators build an integrated understanding of the different elements of physics education research (PER), including: research into student learning, content knowledge from the perspective of how…
Instructional physics labs are critical junctures for many STEM majors to develop an understanding of experimentation in the sciences. Students can acquire useful experimental skills and grow their identities as scientists. However, many…
University students taking introductory physics are generally successful executing mathematical procedures in context, but often struggle with the use of mathematical concepts for sense making. Physics instructors note that their students…
There is some evidence that conceptual inquiry-based introductory physics lab curricula, such as RealTime Physics, may improve students' understanding of physics concepts. Thus, these curricula may be attractive for instructors who seek to…
A central goal of Introductory Physics for the Life Sciences (IPLS) is to prepare students to use physics to model and analyze biological situations, a skill of increasing importance for their future studies and careers. Here we report our…
The absence of women among academic staff in physics is in the focus of our research. To explore the causes of this gender imbalance, we conducted a nationwide representative survey among Ph.D. students and interviews with Ph.D. students…
Students' self-efficacy, interest, and perceived recognition from others have been shown to be very important for the development of their identity in a given field, which is a critical predictor of students' career decisions. Prior…
The importance of science beliefs such as self-efficacy, interest, identity, sense of belonging, perceived recognition and effectiveness of peer interaction in science education has been increasingly recognized in recent years. Here, we use…
Collaboration with peers both inside and outside the classroom can be an invaluable tool for helping students learn physics. We investigated the impact of peer collaboration on learning physics by examining the characteristics of women and…
In this investigation, we analyzed individual interviews with six female undergraduate physics majors at a large, public, research university in the US to understand their progression at different transition points to becoming physicists.…
Physics labs provide a unique opportunity for students to grow their physics identity and science identity in general since they provide students with opportunity to tinker with experiments and analyze data in a low-stakes environment.…
This work aims to understand how effective the typical admissions criteria used in physics are at identifying students who will complete the PhD. Through a multivariate statistical analysis of a sample that includes roughly one in eight…
Introductory physics labs can be designed and studied using the Communities of Practice framework, where a group of members pursues a common set of goals by learning and implementing a set of practices. Studies of student preferences and…
Historically, physics has been a predominantly male field, with previous literature showing there is little diversity amongst U.S. physics students at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Recent research indicates that the lack of…
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…
Increasing student retention (successfully finishing a particular course) and persistence (continuing through a sequence of courses or the major area of study) is currently a major challenge for universities. While students' academic and…
An analysis of barriers to women's participation in physics education is presented. It is expected that in undergraduate physics the most common situation for a women is that she is cisgender and one of a numerical minority in the…
This research focuses on the experiences of seven undergraduate women who were majoring in physics in a medium-size physics department at a small liberal arts college. In the semi-structured, empathetic interviews we conducted, the women…
Computation is a central aspect of 21st century physics practice; it is used to model complicated systems, to simulate impossible experiments, and to analyze mountains of data. Physics departments and their faculty are increasingly…