Related papers: The Role of Conceptual Problem Solving in Learning…
Traditionally, scholars in physics education research pay attention to students solving well-structured learning activities, which provide restricted room for collaboration and idea-generation due to their close-ended nature. In order to…
What kind of problem-solving instruction can help students apply what they have learned to solve the new and unfamiliar problems they will encounter in the future? We propose that mathematical sensemaking, the practice of seeking coherence…
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…
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.…
There is a substantial curricular overlap between calculus and physics, yet introductory physics students often struggle to connect the two. We introduce a quantity-based framing of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus (FTC) to help unify…
Compared with introductory physics, relatively little is known about the development of expertise in advanced physics courses, especially in the case of quantum mechanics. Here, we describe a framework for understanding the patterns of…
Understanding issues involved in expertise in physics problem solving is important for helping students become good problem solvers. In part 1 of this article, we summarize the research on problem-solving relevant for physics education…
Training students in basic concepts of physics, such as the ones related to mass, volume, or density, is much more complicated than just stating the underlying definitions and laws. One of the reasons for this is that most students have…
Despite the prevalence of physics education research literature related to problem solving, recent studies have illustrated that opportunities for ``authentic'' problem solving -- conceptualized as making decisions with limited information…
We discuss the development of interactive video tutorial-based problems to help introductory physics students learn effective problem solving heuristics. The video tutorials present problem solving strategies using concrete examples in an…
An important goal of graduate physics core courses is to help students develop expertise in problem solving and improve their reasoning and meta-cognitive skills. We explore the conceptual difficulties of physics graduate students by…
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…
A common learning goal for modern physics instructors is for students to recognize a difference between the experimental uncertainty of classical physics and the fundamental uncertainty of quantum mechanics. Our studies suggest this…
In recent years there has been growing evidence that even after teaching designed to address the learning difficulties dictated by literature, many physics learners fail to create the proper reasoning chains that connect the fundamental…
I am a second-year cognitive science major, and as a student who has completed my physical science distribution requirements, I will likely never again encounter Gauss's law. So why do I feel that the time and effort I devoted to solving…
Previous research has found that introductory physics students perform far better on numeric problems than on otherwise equivalent symbolic problems. This paper describes a framework to explain these differences developed by analyzing…
During the last decade we have witnessed an impressive development in so-called interpreted languages and computational environments such as Maple, Mathematica, IDL, Matlab etc. Problems which until recently were typically solved on…
Mathematics is an essential element of physics problem solving, but experts often fail to appreciate exactly how they use it. Math may be the language of science, but math-in-physics is a distinct dialect of that language. Physicists tend…
Prior research has demonstrated how the realist perspectives of classical physics students can translate into specific beliefs about quantum phenomena when taking an introductory modern physics course. Student beliefs regarding the…
A common learning goal for modern physics instructors is for students to recognize a difference between the experimental uncertainty of classical physics and the fundamental uncertainty of quantum mechanics. Our prior work has shown that…