Related papers: Better Physics Teaching Can Increase Physics Enrol…
Students must learn effective problem solving strategies in order to develop expertise in physics. Effective problem solving strategies include a conceptual analysis of the problem followed by planning of the solution, and then…
This article quantitatively examines the effects that different incentives have on students' homework completion rates in introductory physics courses at the United States Air Force Academy. Our data suggest that no more than 10-15% of the…
The Engage to Excel (PCAST) report, the National Research Council's Framework for K-12 Science Education, and the Next Generation Science Standards all call for transforming the physics classroom into an environment that teaches students…
This chapter sets the stage for the rest of the book by exploring the role of intuition as a tool to deepen understanding in Einsteinian physics. Drawing on examples from the history of general relativity, we argue that the development of…
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…
We developed a two-day physics class that uses a nearby forest as a teaching location. Using low-cost material, students design and carry out physics projects outside of the usual controlled environment that is a classroom. In this way they…
The aim of this thesis is to bridge the gap between the world of physics research and secondary education on contemporary quantum physics. We fostered the creation of a generative learning environment formed by quantum physics researchers,…
Physics education research (PER) is a rapidly growing area of PhD specialization. In this article we examine the trajectories that led respondents into a PER graduate program as well as their expected future trajectories. Data were…
Writing is an integral part of the process of science. In the undergraduate physics curriculum, the most common place that students engage with scientific writing is in lab classes, typically through lab notebooks, reports, and proposals.…
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…
Significant obstacles prevent large, university-level, introductory physics courses from effectively teaching problem-solving skills. We describe our program for integrating three internet-based "teaching-while-quizzing" tools to address…
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…
In the Italian education system, secondary students (ages 14-19) are confronted with the foundations of quantum physics during the final term of scientific high school (pre-university year). The Italian Ministry of Education, University and…
The case-study teaching method has a long history (starting at least with Socrates), and wide current use in business schools, medical schools, law schools, and a variety of other disciplines. However, relatively little use is made of it in…
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…
An analysis of barriers to women's participation in physics education is presented. It is expected that in undergraduate physics the most common situation for a women is that she is cisgender and one of a numerical minority in the…
In this paper, we describe how we transformed our large-enrollment introductory physics sequence for life-science students to a Lecture/Studio format and aligned the physics concepts with authentic biological applications. We have reformed…
Learning to use math in science is a non-trivial task. It involves many different skills (not usually taught in a math class) that help blend physical knowledge with mathematical symbology. One of these is the idea of quantification: that…
Momentum exists in the physics community for integrating computation into the undergraduate curriculum. One of many benefits would be preparation for computational research. Our investigation poses the question of which computational skills…
The research presented in this thesis was motivated by the need to improve introductory physics courses. Introductory physics courses are generally the first courses in which students learn to create models to solve complex problems.…