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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…
Many studies have investigated students' epistemological framing when solving physics problems. Framing supports students' problem solving as they decide what knowledge to employ and the necessary steps to solve the problem. Students may…
Students' attitudes and approaches to problem solving in physics can profoundly influence their motivation to learn and development of expertise. We developed and validated an Attitudes and Approaches to Problem Solving survey by expanding…
Many researchers and textbooks have promoted the use of rigid prescribed strategies for encouraging development of expert-like problem-solving behavior in novice students. The University of British Columbia's introductory algebra-based…
Sketches and diagrams play an important role in the daily work of software developers. In this paper, we investigate the use of sketches and diagrams in software engineering practice. To this end, we used both quantitative and qualitative…
Modeling the creative mathematical sensemaking that characterizes expert thinking in physics is typically a struggle for new learners. To help students learn to reason this way, we created a set of supplemental activities called Physics…
Investigations related to expertise in problem solving and ability to transfer learning from one context to another are important for developing strategies to help students perform more expert-like tasks. Here we analyze written responses…
Developing expert-like problem-solving skills is a central goal of undergraduate physics education. In this study, we investigate the impact of teaching explicit problem-solving frameworks, combined with deliberate practice, on students'…
Helping students learn to think like a physicist is an important goal of many introductory physics courses. One characteristic distinguishing more experienced physicists from novice students is that they make better use of problem solving…
Combinatorial optimization problems near algorithmic phase transitions represent a fundamental challenge for both classical algorithms and machine learning approaches. Among them, graph coloring stands as a prototypical constraint…
This study investigates the representations and understandings of electric fields expressed by Chinese high school students 15 to 16 years old who have not received high school level physics instruction. The physics education research…
Formally investigating the sources of students' difficulties around specific subjects is crucial for developing appropriate strategies to help students. We have been studying difficulties in understanding magnetism encountered by students…
Helping students become proficient problem solvers is a major goal of many physics courses from introductory to advanced levels. In fact, physics has often been used by cognitive scientists to investigate the differences between the…
Embedding physics problems unreal-world settings, here termed contextualized physics problems (CPP), is widely believed to foster students' interest, motivation, and learning. However, firm evidence for this claim remains scarce. To explore…
Our work contributes to the fast-growing literature on the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) to perform graph-related tasks. In particular, we focus on usage scenarios that rely on the visual modality, feeding the model with a drawing of…
The recent "pre-train, prompt, predict training" paradigm has gained popularity as a way to learn generalizable models with limited labeled data. The approach involves using a pre-trained model and a prompting function that applies a…
In this paper we investigate the extent to which students' problem-solving behaviors change as a result of working on multi-faceted, context-rich problems. During the semester, groups of two to three students work on several problems that…
Questions of participant understanding of the nature of an activity have been addressed in anthropology and sociolinguistics with the concepts of frames and framing. For example, a student may frame a learning activity as an opportunity for…
Educational research has shown that narratives are useful tools that can help young students make sense of scientific phenomena. Based on previous research, I argue that narratives can also become tools for high school students to make…
Identifying and controlling bias is a key problem in empirical sciences. Causal diagram theory provides graphical criteria for deciding whether and how causal effects can be identified from observed (nonexperimental) data by covariate…