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Researchers have argued against deficit-based explanations of students' troubles with mathematical sense-making, pointing instead to factors such as epistemology: students' beliefs about knowledge and learning can hinder them from…
We studied the impact of metacognitive reflections on recently completed work as a way to improve the retention of newly-learned problem-solving techniques. Students video-recorded themselves talking through problems immediately after…
Introductory undergraduate courses in classical physics stress a perspective that can be characterized as realist; from this perspective, all physical properties of a classical system can be simultaneously specified and thus determined at…
This article reports on an investigation of student understanding of the concept of time in special relativity. A series of research tasks are discussed that illustrate, step-by-step, how student reasoning of fundamental concepts of…
During the past several years the authors have developed a new approach to the teaching of Physical Science, a general education course typically found in the curricula of nearly every college and university. This approach, called `Physics…
We review and extend existing frameworks on modeling to develop a new framework that describes model-based reasoning in upper-division physics labs. Constructing and using models are core scientific practices that have gained significant…
Physics lab courses are an essential part of the physics undergraduate curriculum. Learning goals for these classes often include the ability to interpret measurements and uncertainties. The Physics Measurement Questionnaire (PMQ) is an…
We developed a survey to probe student understanding of quantum mechanics concepts at the beginning of graduate instruction. The survey was administered to 202 graduate students in physics enrolled in first-year quantum mechanics courses…
The paper presents shortly the geometric approach to the problem of a general quantization formalism, both physically meaningful and mathematically consistent.
Framing affects how students interpret, approach, and accomplish tasks. Little is known, however, about how students frame tasks in physics labs. During the first lab of a sequence designed to teach students about modeling and critical…
With limited time available in the classroom, e-learning tools can supplement in-class learning by providing opportunities for students to study and learn outside of class. Such tools can be especially helpful for students who lack adequate…
Student content knowledge and general reasoning abilities are two important areas in education practice and research. However, there hasn't been much work in physics education that clearly documents the possible interactions between content…
A common approach to solving physical reasoning tasks is to train a value learner on example tasks. A limitation of such an approach is that it requires learning about object dynamics solely from reward values assigned to the final state of…
Grading can shape students' learning and encourage use of effective problem solving practices. Teaching assistants (TAs) are often responsible for grading student solutions and providing feedback, thus, their perceptions of grading may…
In this study, we examine introductory physics students' ability to perform analogical reasoning between two isomorphic problems which employ the same underlying physics principles but have different surface features. Three hundred and…
Reinforcement Learning (RL) has achieved tremendous development in recent years, but still faces significant obstacles in addressing complex real-life problems due to the issues of poor system generalization, low sample efficiency as well…
With the rise of large language models such as ChatGPT, interest has grown in understanding how these tools influence learning in STEM education, including physics. This study explores how students use ChatGPT during a physics…
Understanding the mechanisms of student sensemaking while navigating the physics problem-solving process can play an important role in developing approaches to helping students become proficient problem solvers. Since most prior studies on…
Student persistence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has long been a focus of educational research, with both quantitative and qualitative methods being used to investigate patterns and mechanisms of attrition.…
A standing challenge in undergraduate Computer Science curricula is the teaching and learning of computer programming. Through this paper which is an essay about programming, we aim to contribute to the plethora of existing pedagogies,…