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We discuss a study in a first year college introductory physics course for physical science and engineering majors that shows that women, on average, feel less recognized by their physics instructors than men as students who can excel in…
Collaboration among students is fundamental for knowledge building and competency development. Nonetheless, the effectiveness of student collaboration depends on the extent that these interactions take place under conditions that favor…
We are investigating cognitive issues in learning quantum mechanics in order to develop effective teaching and learning tools. The analysis of cognitive issues is particularly important for bridging the gap between the quantitative and…
Environmental Education (EE) is vital for shaping citizens who understand and value sustainability as an epistemological and practical alternative to mitigate current environmental issues. This research was prompted by the exploration of…
Science has traditionally played an important role in sharing knowledge among people. Particle Physics, with its large experiments, has shown that one not only can share the knowledge among different cultures, but that one can also work…
Prior research has shown that physics students often think about experimental procedures and data analysis very differently from experts. One key framework for analyzing student thinking has found that student thinking is more point-like,…
Gaining recognition as a physics person by peers is an important contributor to undergraduate students' physics identity and their success in physics courses. Previous research has separately demonstrated that women perceive less…
The parts contributed by the author in recent discussions with several physicists and mathematicians are reviewed, as they have been occasioned by the 2006 book "The Trouble with Physics", of Lee Smolin. Some of the issues addressed are the…
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…
Developing expertise in physics entails learning to use mathematics effectively and efficiently as applied to the context of physical situations. Doing so involves coordinating a variety of concepts and skills including mathematical…
This work reports on results from the first national study of the impact of student facilitation of informal physics outreach programs on their physics identity, sense of belonging, and essential career skill development. Drawing on results…
The current work aims to better understand student course experiences for those who reported negative perceptions in introductory physics. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 24 students who reported negative perceptions of their…
A national survey of physics faculty was conducted to investigate the prevalence and nature of computational instruction in physics courses across the United States. 1246 faculty from 357 unique institutions responded to the survey. The…
Computation is intertwined with essentially all aspects of physics research and is invaluable for physicists' careers. Despite its disciplinary importance, integration of computation into physics education remains a challenge and, moreover,…
Around the globe Covid-19 pandemic has influenced not only the education, but also our everyday life, among other aspects. In Greece, distance learning started to get in use widely in tertiary education, since the first national lockdown…
Assessments are usually thought of as ways for instructors to get information from students. In this work, we flip this perspective and explore how assessments communicate information to students. Specifically, we consider how assessments…
We present our initial work to develop an assessment of calculus proficiency in the context of introductory physics (i.e., calculus transfer to physics), including a comparison of calculus transfer ability with physics self-efficacy and how…
The traditional approach to studying student understanding presents a question and uses the student answers to make inferences about their knowledge. However, this method does not capture the range of possible alternative ideas available to…
Recent research in mathematics education points to an "epistemic clash" when programming and computational thinking (CT) are leveraged alongside more established forms of mathematical thinking (MT). The emergence of generative AI emphasises…
Students often begin physics courses with misconceptions rooted in everyday experience and intuition, which can be resistant to change. While research has identified strategies for addressing misconceptions across physics, it remains…