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Several years ago I reported a survey (Hake 1998a,b,c) of pre/post test data for 62 introductory physics courses enrolling a total of 6542 students. The present article provides a summary of that survey and presents fourteen lessons from…
When assessing student work, graders will often find that some students will leave one or more problems blank on assessments. Since there is no work shown, the grader has no means to evaluate the student's understanding of a particular…
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…
We address previous hypotheses about possible factors influencing the gender gap in attainment in physics. Specifically, previous studies claim that male advantage may arise from multiple-choice style questions, and that scaffolding may…
High energy physics aims to understand the fundamental laws of particles and their interactions at both the largest and smallest scales of the universe. This typically means probing very high energies or large distances or using…
The Physics First movement - teaching a true physics course to ninth grade students - is gaining popularity in high schools. There are several different rhetorical arguments for and against this movement, and it is quite controversial in…
Physics education research has used quantitative modeling techniques to explore learning, affect, and other aspects of physics education. However, these studies have rarely examined the predictive output of the models, instead focusing on…
The role of student experiences in physics beyond the classroom which support their development has been the subject of exciting research in recent years. Results, typically from small studies at single institutions, have illustrated that…
A brief account of some recent controversies about the teaching and learning of physics is presented. A shorter version of this outcome was accepted by The Physics Teacher, but publication is still pending.
Creating equitable performance outcomes among students is a focus of many instructors and researchers. One focus of this effort is examining disparities in physics student performance across genders, which is a well-established problem.…
Many people hold this truth to be self-evident, that there should be more female students in science and engineering. Typical arguments include possible benefits to women, possible benefits to the economy, and the unfairness of the current…
This article describes the successful revitalization of an undergraduate physics program. The areas of curriculum development, undergraduate research experiences and advising and retention, to name a few, are emphasized in this…
Previous research has found that introductory physics students perform far better on numeric problems than on otherwise equivalent symbolic problems. This paper describes a framework to explain these differences developed by analyzing…
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…
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…
In this study, we investigated the employment status of recent University of Ottawa physics MSc and PhD graduates, finding that 94% of graduates are either employed or pursuing further physics education one year post-graduation. Our…
National studies conducted over many years show that, while most Americans are interested in science and support federal funding of scientific research, the scientific literacy of the public is very low. Why this situation exists and who is…
How students use mathematics in their physics classes has been studied extensively in the physics education literature. In addition to specific mathematical methods in specific physics contexts, possible effects of more general "cultural"…
Cosmology and GR remain largely inaccessible to high-school teaching due to the advanced prerequisites to master these topics. Integrating them into upper secondary teaching is a significant challenge that remains unresolved. This…
Efforts to promote equity and inclusion using evidence-based approaches are vital to correcting long-standing societal inequities that have disadvantaged women and discouraged them from pursuing studies, including in many STEM disciplines.…