Related papers: Case Study: Context Interactions & Physics Faculty…
Improving the physics enterprise to broaden participation in physics is one of the main goals of the physics education research community. Many classically trained physics faculty transition during their faculty career into engaging in…
Most, if not all, physics undergraduate degree programs include instructional lab experiences. Physics lab instructors, both faculty and staff, are instrumental to student learning in instructional physics labs. However, the faculty-staff…
Physics, like many scientific disciplines, has long struggled with attracting and retaining a diverse population and fostering inclusivity. While there have been improvements in addressing equity issues within physics, significant…
Professional development workshops are commonly used to promote the adoption of research-based instructional strategies among physics and astronomy faculty. After learning about such strategies, faculty are often motivated to modify and…
The ability to emotionally or intellectually understand another person's thoughts and feelings-empathy-can foster critical connections that facilitate learning and collaboration. We present a case study of physics faculty that examines…
This paper re-centres the discussion of student learning in physics to focus on context. In order to do so, a theoretically-motivated understanding of context is developed. Given a well-defined notion of context, data from a novel…
The gap between theory and practice is well-documented in educational research. Physics teachers' willingness to apply research findings in practice may be influenced by a sceptical attitude towards science education research. This study…
The case-study teaching method has a long history (starting at least with Socrates), and wide current use in business schools, medical schools, law schools, and a variety of other disciplines. However, relatively little use is made of it in…
The theme of the World Conference on Physics Education 2012 is "Context, Culture, and Representations." In this talk I present a brief outline of a theoretical framework that allows us to discuss these issues using a model based in…
As a result of the deep modifications of the French physics and chemistry curricula in upper secondary school during these last three years, the physics department of the Universit\'e Paris Diderot (France) wished to develop a renovation…
Physicists engage with the public to varying degrees at different stages of their careers. However, their public engagement covers many activities, events, and audiences, making their motivations and professional development needs not well…
Physicists and physics students have been studied with respect to the variation in ways they expound on their topic of research and a physics problem, respectively. A phenomenographic approach has been employed; six fourth-year physics…
Too often, physics students are beset by feelings of failure and isolation rather than experiencing the creative joys of discovery that physics has to offer. This dissertation research was founded on the desire of a teacher to make physics…
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.…
Professional development is a tool that faculty members use to develop knowledge and skills that help them become better teachers. We investigate what influences affect the ways in which faculty take up ideas from professional development…
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…
This work examines how experiences in one disciplinary domain (biology) can impact the relationship a student builds with another domain (physics). We present a model for disciplinary relationships using the constructs of identity, affect,…
This paper describes the development of a new university physics course designed to integrate physics, education, research, and community partnerships. The coordinated system of activities links the new course to local community efforts in…
Increasingly, the physics community is attending to issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion, both in language and action. We are more publicly recognizing our individual responsibilities as physicists to address social injustice and…
This study investigates how faculty acquire contextual information about students, examining mechanisms and motivations used when sharing their identity to facilitate empathy. Empathy is "the ability and tendency to share and understand…