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Six specific modes of reasoning about ratio and proportion have been delineated as a means of operationalizing expert practice. These modes stem from consideration of how physicists reason in context, are informed by prior work in physics…
Helping students learn from their own mistakes can help them develop habits of mind while learning physics content. Based upon cognitive apprenticeship model, we asked students to self-diagnose their mistakes and learn from reflecting on…
Students' learning orientation, as applied towards learning problem solving, may be differentiated into learning a problem solving framework for its own sake, learning for the sake of doing well in the course, and non-goal-related…
Drawing appropriate diagrams is a useful problem solving heuristic that can transform a give problem into a representation that is easier to exploit for solving it. A major focus while helping introductory physics students learn problem…
We discuss several ways of illustrating fundamental concepts in statistical and thermal physics by considering various models and algorithms. We emphasize the importance of replacing students' incomplete mental images by models that are…
Students in introductory physics courses often rely on ineffective strategies, focusing on final answers rather than understanding underlying principles. Integrating scientific argumentation into problem-solving fosters critical thinking…
This paper explores an intervention that emphasizes expert practice using spaced recall. Interviews were performed with two students who were shown physics solutions, and were asked to repeatedly recall the solutions over a period of weeks.…
The physics of matter in the condensed state is concerned with problems in which the number of constituent particles is vastly greater than can be easily comprehended. The inherent physical limitations of the human mind are fundamental and…
Biological brains are inherently limited in their capacity to process and store information, but are nevertheless capable of solving complex tasks with apparent ease. Intelligent behavior is related to these limitations, since resource…
One of the main activities in science teaching, and in particular in Physics teaching, is not only the discussion of both modern problems and problems which solution is an urgent matter. It means that the picture of an active and alive…
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"…
If spreadsheets are not erroneous then who, or what, is? Research has found that end-users are. If end-users are erroneous then why are they? Research has found that responsibility lies with human beings' fast and slow thinking modes and…
Most artificial intelligence models have limiting ability to solve new tasks faster, without forgetting previously acquired knowledge. The recently emerging paradigm of continual learning aims to solve this issue, in which the model learns…
The results of the National High School Examination (ENEM) are an important tool for a diagnosis of educational deficiencies at the end of a training cycle. This exam is a relevant source of data for the evaluation of what is learned by…
Large Transformer models have achieved impressive performance in many natural language tasks. In particular, Transformer based language models have been shown to have great capabilities in encoding factual knowledge in their vast amount of…
When deploying online homework in physics courses, an important consideration is how many attempts should be allowed in order to solve numerical free-response problems. While on the one hand, the maximum number of attempts should be large…
Large language models (LLMs) draw on both contextual information and parametric memory, yet these sources can conflict. Prior studies have largely examined this issue in contextual question answering, implicitly assuming that tasks should…
Large language models (LLMs) have recently gained popularity. However, the impact of their general availability through ChatGPT on sensitive areas of everyday life, such as education, remains unclear. Nevertheless, the societal impact on…
Covariational reasoning--considering how changes in one quantity affect another, related quantity--is a foundation of quantitative modeling in physics. Understanding quantitative models is a learning objective of introductory physics…
The cyclic format of the undergraduate physics curriculum depends on students' ability to recall and utilize material covered in prior courses in order to reliably build on that knowledge in later courses. However, there is evidence to…