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Many students in upper-division physics courses struggle with the mathematically sophisticated tools and techniques that are required for advanced physics content. We have developed an analytical framework to assist instructors and…
Traditional high-stakes summative assessments--timed, in-class exams accounting for a large percentage of the term's overall grade--have often received criticism from the educational community. Such assessments tend to prize a particular…
Problem solving is central to physics instruction. Results from Physics Education Research (PER), however, demonstrate that traditional ways of teaching with problem solving are inefficient and ineffective for promoting true physics…
Test anxiety is beginning to be recognized as a significant factor affecting student performance in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses, potentially contributing to gender inequity within these fields.…
Learning advanced physics, in general, is challenging not only due to the increased mathematical sophistication but also because one must continue to build on all of the prior knowledge acquired at the introductory and intermediate levels.…
We use self-reported data from 2011--2014 and determine the academic profile of accepted students at physics graduate programs in the United States. We analyze the accepted students' grade point averages and physics Graduate Record…
While acute stress has been shown to have both positive and negative effects on performance, not much is known about the impacts of stress on students grades during examinations. To answer this question, we examined whether a correlation…
This study was investigated to understand the in-depth features and processes of physicists' scientific inquiries. At first, research motives were investigated by interviewing six physicists who were prominent worldwide. As a result, three…
Experiments performed in the Physics Laboratory play a significant role in understanding the concepts taught in the theory. A good accompanying laboratory manual serves as a concise guideline which students can use to complete the…
High school science classrooms across the United States are answering calls to make computation a part of science learning. The problem is that there is little known about the barriers to learning that computation might bring to a science…
The lack of diversity and the under-performance of underrepresented students in STEM courses have been the focus of researchers in the last decade. In particular, many hypotheses have been put forth for the reasons for the…
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…
Writing is a critical skill for modern science, enabling collaboration, scientific discourse, public outreach, and more. Accordingly, it is important to consider how physicists and astronomers are trained to write. This study aims to…
The large number of published articles in physics journals under the title "Comments on ..." and "Reply to ..." is indicative that the conceptual understanding of physical phenomena is very elusive and hard to grasp even to experts, but it…
This article describes an undergraduate physics module at a university in England that places year 3 student physicists in secondary school classrooms for a semester. This is done as a way of introducing them to the occupation of secondary…
Students who successfully engage in self-regulated learning, are able to plan their own studying, monitoring their progress and make any necessary adjustments based upon the data and feedback they gather. In order to promote this type of…
Helping students become proficient problem-solvers is one of the primary goals of physics courses. In part 1 of this article, we summarized the vast research on problem-solving relevant for physics instruction, and here we discuss a…
I believe that most teachers develop a belief in a set of pedagogical practices. As we teach, we try different ways to teach topics and then judge how successful the methods were. After several years, we have a compilation of techniques in…
Laboratory courses represent a unique and potentially important component of the undergraduate physics curriculum, which can be designed to allow students to authentically engage with the process of experimental physics. Among other…
When considering performing an Introductory Physics for Life Sciences course transformation for one's own institution, life science majors' achievement goals are a necessary consideration to ensure the pedagogical transformation will be…