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The study guide (textbook) is part of a set of materials designed to support high-quality practical training in physics. It includes a collection of tasks for organizing both in-class and independent work. The guide serves as a foundation…
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.…
A brief account of some recent controversies about the teaching and learning of physics is presented. A shorter version of this outcome was accepted by The Physics Teacher, but publication is still pending.
A difficult challenge in physics education is to design professional development programs for teachers, which can lead to fundamental changes in their practise. We report all activities for physics teachers in the context of the National…
Problem-based learning (PBL) is a constructivist learner-centered instructional approach based on the analysis, resolution and discussion of a given problem. It can be applied to any subject, indeed it is especially useful for the teaching…
If students are to successfully grapple with authentic, complex biological problems as scientists and citizens, they need practice solving such problems during their undergraduate years. Physics education researchers have investigated…
Physics community is generally concerned about the decrease in Physics enrollment. Due to the deficiency of specially qualified Physics teachers, high school Physics is sometimes taught by general science teachers who may not be trained to…
Instructors in introductory physics courses often use labs and demonstrations to reinforce that the physics equations introduced in lectures and textbooks describe what actually happens in the real world. The surface features and…
We analyze the problem solving strategies of physics professors in a case where their physical intuition fails. A non-intuitive introductory-level problem was identified and posed to twenty physics professors. The problem placed the…
Despite the large body of research showing that students in STEM classes at all levels learn better via active learning than they do via lecture, post-secondary physics and astronomy (P&A) faculty members continue to primarily use…
A primary goal of physics is to create mathematical models that allow both predictions and explanations of physical phenomena. We weave maths extensively into our physics instruction beginning in high school, and the level and complexity of…
Scientists who study how the brain solves problems have recently verified that, because of stringent limitations in working memory, where the brain solves problems, students must apply facts and algorithms that have previously been well…
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…
Recruiting and retaining highly qualified physics and physical science teachers is critical for maintaining America's global competitiveness. Unfortunately, only one third of the high school teachers in physics have a degree in physics and…
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…
We describe the development of a junior-senior level course for Physics majors designed to teach Mathematica skills in support of their undergraduate coursework, but also to introduce students to modern research level results. Standard…
One of the main activities in science teaching, and in particular in Physics teaching, is not only the discussion of both modern problems and problems which solution is an urgent matter. It means that the picture of an active and alive…
We investigated the effects of student-generated problems on exams. The process was gradual with some training throughout the semester. Initial results were highly positive with the students involved performing significantly better, and…
Education is a goal-oriented field. But if we want to treat education scientifically so we can accumulate, evaluate, and refine what we learn, then we must develop a theoretical framework that is strongly rooted in objective observations…
Much work in physics education research (PER) characterizes faculty teaching practice in terms of whether faculty use specific named PER-based teaching methods, either with fidelity or with adaptation; we call this research paradigm the…