Related papers: Epistemic stances toward group work in learning ph…
A considerable share of the literature on physics education and on education more broadly focuses on the principles which should guide the design of courses and of classroom activities. In this short article I wish to place more attention…
Effective physics learning, especially in complex topics, requires balancing mathematical formalism with conceptual understanding. Conceptual problem-solving involves connecting math to physical reality, and using an epistemological…
Social physics is the application of ideas, concepts and tools from physics to study social phenomena. In this article, we present a mechanical theory underlying a mathematical treatment of social physics. We explore the possibility of…
The ability to categorize problems based upon underlying principles, rather than contexts, is considered a hallmark of expertise in physics problem solving. With inspiration from a classic study by Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser, we compared…
Engaging in interactions with peers is important for student learning. Many studies have quantified patterns of student interactions in in-person physics courses using social network analysis, finding different network structures between…
Group configurations play a pivotal role in shaping social skills and learning outcomes by fostering student interaction and collaboration. Yet, the factors influencing group formation, social cohesion, and group stability remain…
Engaging in meaningful collaborations with peers, both inside and outside the classroom, can greatly enhance students' understanding of physics and other STEM disciplines. We analyzed the characteristics of women and men who typically…
We are interested in better understanding ways that students collaborate to solve conceptual physics problems in the context of spherical unit vectors in upper-level E&M, especially problems that have been shown to be difficult for students…
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…
For several decades, scholars have studied cooperation and its outcomes in the educational context. Yet, we lack a complete understanding of how different instructional strategies impact the relationship between cooperation and learning.…
Recent decades have seen a rise in the use of physics methods to study different societal phenomena. This development has been due to physicists venturing outside of their traditional domains of interest, but also due to scientists from…
Students must learn effective problem solving strategies in order to develop expertise in physics. Effective problem solving strategies include a conceptual analysis of the problem followed by planning of the solution, and then…
Scientists are generally subject to social pressures, including pressures to conform with others in their communities, that affect achievement of their epistemic goals. Here we analyze a network epistemology model in which agents, all else…
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…
In this article we present and discuss a didactic activity that combines epistemic aspects of the nature of science (NOS) and a simple, relatively low-cost experiment on electromagnetic induction. The aim of the activity is for students to…
Researchers working within knowledge-in-pieces traditions have often employed observational approaches to investigate micro-processes of learning. There is growing evidence from this line of work that students' intuitive thinking about…
Collaboration is a key driver of science and innovation. Mainly motivated by the need to leverage different capacities and expertise to solve a scientific problem, collaboration is also an excellent source of information about the future…
Developing expertise in physics requires appropriate integration and assimilation of physics and mathematics. Instructors and students often describe physics courses in terms of their emphasis on conceptual and quantitative problem-solving.…
Recent developments in aligning Large Language Models (LLMs) with human preferences have significantly enhanced their utility in human-AI collaborative scenarios. However, such approaches often neglect the critical role of "epistemic…
Systematic observations of student gestures can not only fill in gaps in students' verbal expressions, but can also offer valuable information about student ideas, including their source, their novelty to the speaker, and their construction…