physics education research

Physics Education Research

Physics Education Research (PER) is the study of how people learn physics and how to improve the quality of physics education. Researchers use the tools and methods of science to answer questions about physics learning that require knowledge of physics. Researchers focus on developing objective means of measuring the outcomes of educational interventions. How do we know whether our courses and interventions are successful?

One such approach is the design of diagnostic assessments and surveys. While many instructors develop questions to assess student learning, diagnostic research assessments undergo rigorous design, testing, and validation processes to facilitate objective comparisons between students and methods of instruction. These assessments are like detectors that must be carefully crafted and calibrated to ensure we understand what they are measuring.

The Cornell Physics Education Research Lab has a large focus on studying and developing learning in lab courses. Researchers are collecting data to evaluate the efficacy of lab courses in achieving various goals, from reinforcing physics concepts to fostering student attitudes and motivation to developing critical thinking and experimentation skills. They are designing innovative teaching methods to harness the affordances of lab courses, namely, working with messy data, getting hands on materials, troubleshooting equipment, and connecting physical models to the real world and data. There are many open research questions related to understanding how students learn these ideas.

This work will be facilitated by a research Active Learning Initiative grant from the Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences led by Natasha Holmes (PI). This grant will facilitate the renewal of the physics lab elements of the two calculus-based introductory physics course sequences. In addition to redesigning the instructional materials, this project will involve significant attention on understanding how instructional materials get passed down between instructors and sustained over time, how teaching assistants are trained to support the innovative designs, and many open research questions to evaluate students’ experience and learning in these courses.

The recent Cornell University Physics Initiative in Deliberate practice (CUPID) was a 5-year project to renew the introductory, calculus-based physics course sequence for Engineering and Physics majors. This project, led by Jeevak Parpia and Tomás Arias and involving more than 8 other faculty and lecturers in the department, applied results of PER to improve the teaching and learning in Cornell University courses, and to test the generalizability of results observed elsewhere. By collecting assessment, survey, and exam data across the duration of the course implementation, the group demonstrated significant improvements in student learning and attitudes. They are now in the process of monitoring how the course materials get passed on to new faculty. There are many opportunities to study differences in various forms of active learning.

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Ann S. Bowers Associate Professor

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Education research is our focus

Welcome to PER-Central, a resource collection for physics education researchers. Here you may find articles, theses and dissertations, research groups, curricular material, and news and events of interest to the PER Community. Learn more about PER-Central .

PER Literature

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By Topic: Astronomy , Classical Mechanics , Electricity & Magnetism , Fluid Mechanics , General Physics , Mathematical Tools , Modern Physics , Optics , Oscillations & Waves , Other Sciences , Quantum Physics , Relativity , Thermo & Stat Mech

Volume 2 of Reviews in PER is dedicated to helping researchers get started in Physics Education Research. In this review article, a member of the PER community presents an overview of an area of PER:

Getting Started with Quantitative Methods in Physics Education Research by L. Ding and X. Liu .

Find more articles introducing PER research methods in Volume 2 of Reviews in PER .

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Browse the different PER groups and their descriptions on the PER Program Map .

For the Classroom

PhysPort The PhysPort helps physics educators apply PER results, assessments, and the teaching methods based on these results.

Find more PER-based Curricular Materials: Course Packages | Student Activities | Pedagogy Guides

PhysPort: Research-Based Assessments PhysPort's collection of research-validated physics and astronomy learning assessments and science appreciation surveys are available for many topics and levels of student, from high school through upper division. Information is provided on the goal and structure of each assessment, research results, and best practices for using the assessments. The assessment database also includes the Data Explorer service that analyzes assessments results and compares to national outcomes. Access to the assessments is restricted to verified physics and astronomy educators and researchers.

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FFPER: Puget Sound 2024 The fifth FFPERPS (Foundations and Frontiers of Physics Education Research: Puget Sound) conference will be held June 20-23, 2024 at the North Cascades Environmental Learning Center.

Physics Education Research Conference 2024 PERC 2024 will be held July 10-11, 2024 in Boston, Massachusetts.  The theme will be "Bridging the Institutional Gap: PER at Primarily Undergraduate Four Year Institution, Two-Year College, and K-12 Levels."

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Latest Additions

Latest discussion posts.

May 16 at 7:50 PM EST Alexis Knaub posted Book Giveaway for PERC 2024 session to the US - AAPT Physics Education Researc... thread.

January 23 at 5:56 PM EST Patricia Soto posted X-DBER 2023: Abstract submission (due Feb 12) to the US - AAPT Physics Education Researc... thread.

January 19 at 6:12 PM EST Patricia Soto posted X-DBER 2023: Abstract announcement to the US - AAPT Physics Education Researc... thread.

September 29 at 2:27 PM EST Alice Churukian posted PERLOC Councilor Nominations 2023 to the US - AAPT Physics Education Researc... thread.

Latest Comments

May 15 at 2:15 PM EST Lyle posted 2023 Notable Paper to the ChatGPT reflects student mis... thread.

May 15 at 2:15 PM EST Lyle posted 2023 Notable Paper to the Investigating Perceptions of... thread.

May 15 at 2:15 PM EST Lyle posted 2023 Notable Paper to the "The prettiest photos are th... thread.

May 15 at 2:15 PM EST Lyle posted 2023 Notable Paper to the A Look Physics Teacher Ident... thread.

CERN Accelerating science

Physics Education Research

The CERN Convention cites engaging the public with fundamental research as a vital part of the Organization's mission. Indeed, CERN and the experimental collaborations it hosts have a considerable history of high-quality communication and outreach efforts that reach a wide range of international audiences. These activities are complemented by prominent educational programmes, such as CERN's residential programmes for high-school science teachers and students . In 2009, CERN's Physics Education Research (PER) activities were launched to support and further develop educational activities and to provide consultancy for all actors in the Organization's education and outreach efforts.

Today, CERN's PER team comprises an international team of staff scientists, postdoctoral research fellows, doctoral students, and visiting master students who perform education research in the field of particle physics. Among the various research activities are quantitative and qualitative studies focusing on teachers' professional development and students' conceptions and interest, as well as the iterative development of low-cost, hands-on experimental equipment for the classroom and the education labs in CERN's Science Gateway . For a detailed overview of all ongoing and completed research projects and to meet CERN's PER team, have a look here!

Latest Publications

• Kersting, M., Blair, D., Sandrelli, S., Sherson, J. & Woithe, J. ( 2023 ). Making an IMPRESSion: mapping out future directions in modern physics education. Physics Education, 59(1), 015501, article
• Dahlkemper, M. N., Lahme, S. Z. & Klein, P. ( 2023 ). How do physics students evaluate artificial intelligence responses on comprehension questions? A study on the perceived scientific accuracy and linguistic quality of ChatGPT. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 19(1), 010142, article
• Woithe, J., Boselli, M., Chatzidaki, P., Dahlkemper, M. N., Duggan, R., Durey, G., Herff, N., Kranjc Horvat, A., Molaro, D., Scheerer, G. W., Schmeling, S., Thill, P. T., Wiener, J. & Zoechling, S. ( 2022 ). Higgs in a box: investigating the nature of a scientific discovery. The Physics Educator, 4(4), 1-15, article
• Dahlkemper, M.N., Klein, P., Müller, A., Schmeling, S.M. & Wiener, J. ( 2022 ). Opportunities and Challenges of Using Feynman Diagrams with Upper Secondary Students. Physics, 4(4), 1331-1347, article
• Kranjc Horvat, A., Wiener, J., Schmeling, S. & Borowski, A. ( 2022 ). What Does the Curriculum Say? Review of the Particle Physics Content in 27 High-School Physics Curricula. Physics, 4(4), 1278-1298, article
• Zöchling, S., Hopf, M., Woithe, J. & Schmeling, S. ( 2022 ). Students’ interest in particle physics: Conceptualisation, instrument development, and evaluation using Rasch theory and analysis, International Journal of Science Education, article
• Chatzidaki, P., Woithe, J., David, A. & Dunford, M. ( 2022 ). Ten things we’ve learned about the Higgs boson in the past ten years, Science in School, 59, article
• Kranjc Horvat, A., Boselli, M., Chatzidaki, P., Dahlkemper, M. N., Duggan, R., Durey, G., Herff, N., Molaro, D., Scheerer, G. W., Schmeling, S., Thill, P. T., Wiener, J., Woithe, J. & Zöchling, S. ( 2022 ). The mystery box challenge: explore the nature of science, Science in School, 59, article
• Woithe, J., Müller, A., Schmeling, S. & Kuhn, J. ( 2022 ). Motivational outcomes of the science outreach lab S'Cool LAB at CERN: A multilevel analysis. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, article
• Zöchling, S., Hopf, M., Woithe, J. & Schmeling, S. ( 2022 ). MAKE IT MATTER: How to foster interest in particle physics by setting it in meaningful contexts. PoS (EPS-HEP2021), 889, 1-4, proceedings
• Kranjc Horvat, A., Wiener, J., Schmeling, S. & Borowski, A. ( 2022 ). Learning Goals of Professional Development Programs at Science Research Institutions: A Delphi Study with Different Stakeholder Groups. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 33(1), 32-54, article

For a complete overview of all publications of CERN's PER team,  have a look here!

Acting as an international PER hub, CERN actively collaborates with many partners throughout CERN's Member States and beyond on a variety of projects, many of which are related to doctoral students' research projects. If your institute or organisation is not yet in the non-exhaustive list below, feel free to get in touch - we should talk!

Physical Review Physics Education Research

• Collections
• Editorial Team

Volume 20, Issue 1 (partial)

January - june 2024, editorials and announcements, editorial: discontinuation of short papers in prper, charles henderson, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010001 (2024) – published 16 january 2024, editorial: coauthor coauthor, randall d. kamien and daniel ucko, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010002 (2024) – published 21 may 2024, highlighted articles, featured in physics editors' suggestion, physics ph.d. student perspectives on the importance and difficulty of finding a research group, mike verostek, casey w. miller, and benjamin m. zwickl, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010136 (2024) – published 7 may 2024, : alleviating the stress of finding a phd advisor.

Graduate students, particularly minoritized students, feel unprepared to choose a research group and can benefit from enhanced support in making this choice.

Show Abstract

Featured in physics, diverging nonlocal fields: operationalizing critical disability physics identity with neurodivergent physicists outside academia, liam g. mcdermott, nazeer a. mosley, and geraldine l. cochran, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010111 (2024) – published 29 february 2024, : ableism puts neurodivergent students at a disadvantage.

Neurodivergent students experience unnecessary barriers to success in physics from assessment that is not constructed for how neurodivergent physicists perform physics-related tasks.

Editors' Suggestion

Performance of chatgpt on the test of understanding graphs in kinematics, giulia polverini and bor gregorcic, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010109 (2024) – published 23 february 2024.

ChatGPT does well at proposing productive strategies for solving problems on the test of understanding graphs in kinematics, but does poorly at getting correct answers due to limited ability to visually interpret graphs.

Method to assess the trustworthiness of machine coding at scale

Rebeckah k. fussell, emily m. stump, and n. g. holmes, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010113 (2024) – published 6 march 2024.

A four part method will help draw trustworthy claims from machine coding of qualitative data.

Cheat sites and artificial intelligence usage in online introductory physics courses: What is the extent and what effect does it have on assessments?

Gerd kortemeyer and wolfgang bauer, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010145 (2024) – published 23 may 2024.

Students in on-line introductory physics courses showed patterns of help-seeking and resource-usage patterns which did not influence scores on supervised assessments.

Statistically equivalent models with different causal structures: An example from physics identity

Yangqiuting li and chandralekha singh, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010101 (2024) – published 16 january 2024.

Good model fit alone is not sufficient to verify the causal structure of a statistical models; additional evidence is required.

Gender equity in physics labs

Danny doucette and chandralekha singh, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010102 (2024) – published 30 january 2024.

Indicators and causes of gender inequities within educational physics labs and how to reduce them.

Relationship between semiotic representations and student performance in the context of refraction

Cedric linder, jesper bruun, arvid pohl, and burkhard priemer, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010103 (2024) – published 5 february 2024.

Students develop representational competency synergistically with the development of ways to communicate about these representations.

Applying module analysis to the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment

Christopher wheatley, james wells, and john stewart, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010104 (2024) – published 6 february 2024.

Modified module analysis revealed communities of answers to the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment based on incorrect answers and the structure of the instrument itself.

Exploring student reasoning in statistical mechanics: Identifying challenges in problem-solving groups

Ebba koerfer and bor gregorcic, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010105 (2024) – published 12 february 2024.

The strong reliance on idealized toy models to illustrate concepts in statistical mechanics may not be sufficient to support high quality student learning.

Using continua to analyze qualitative data investigating epistemic beliefs about physics knowledge: Visualizing beliefs

Ellen watson and gregory thomas, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010106 (2024) – published 15 february 2024.

Novel means of analyzing interview data to construct profiles to describe epistemic beliefs on physics knowledge.

Designing e-learning courses for classroom and distance learning in physics: The role of learning tasks

Daniel laumann, julian alexander fischer, tatjana k. stürmer-steinmann, julia welberg, susanne weßnigk, and knut neumann, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010107 (2024) – published 16 february 2024.

Open-ended tasks, while useful for in-person physics courses, should be used less frequently in completely online courses.

Open-inquiry opens doors to intriguing optics experiments at home: A case study

Paul r. destefano and ralf widenhorn, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010108 (2024) – published 20 february 2024.

Investigating an optical phenomenon during pandemic remote learning supports experimental design and modeling skills.

Investigating students’ self-identified and reflected appraisal of femininity, masculinity, and androgyny in introductory physics courses

Yangqiuting li and eric burkholder, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010110 (2024) – published 27 february 2024.

Using gradational measures of femininity, masculinity, and androgeny one finds that physics students perceptions differ from binary gender of men and women.

Analysis of visual-based physics questions of the senior high school entrance examination in China

Chengran wang and bing wei, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010112 (2024) – published 5 march 2024.

The senior high school entrance examination can be improved by including more items focused on assessing higher-order visual cognitive skills such as evaluating and creating visual representations.

Role of mentorship, career conceptualization, and leadership in developing women’s physics identity and belonging

Jessica l. rosenberg, nancy holincheck, kathryn fernández, benjamin w. dreyfus, fardousa wardere, stephanie stehle, and tiffany n. butler, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010114 (2024) – published 11 march 2024.

Formal leadership experiences help women in physics feel more confident, contributing to their recognition of themselves as physics people.

Investigating introductory and advanced students’ difficulties with change in internal energy, work, and heat transfer using a validated instrument

Mary jane brundage, david e. meltzer, and chandralekha singh, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010115 (2024) – published 12 march 2024.

Even upper-level physics students struggle with basic thermodynamics concepts related to internal energy, work, and heat transfer.

Evaluating IBM’s Watson natural language processing artificial intelligence as a short-answer categorization tool for physics education research

Jennifer campbell, katie ansell, and tim stelzer, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010116 (2024) – published 22 march 2024.

Artificial intelligence tools are not currently suitable for assessing individual student work, but can be used to summarize the level of a class’ understanding for the purpose of adjusting instruction.

Redesigning a first year physics lab course on the basis of the procedural and conceptual knowledge in science model

C. f. j. pols and p. j. j. m. dekkers, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010117 (2024) – published 22 march 2024.

The procedural and conceptual knowledge science model guides curriculum design and analysis of student engagement and understanding.

Changing person-environment fit among underrepresented undergraduate physics students: Successes from a small department

Ann y. kim, vina ton, and daniel vega, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010118 (2024) – published 29 march 2024.

There are concrete things that faculty can do to create a welcoming and supportive environment within their physics department.

Physics instructors’ knowledge and use of active learning has increased over the last decade but most still lecture too much

Melissa dancy, charles henderson, naneh apkarian, estrella johnson, marilyne stains, jeffrey r. raker, and alexandra lau, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010119 (2024) – published 2 april 2024.

A survey of physics instructors shows that self-reported knowledge and use of research-based instructional strategies has increased, but strategy use is centered on pedagogies designed to help a lecture-based classroom.

How to help students learn: An investigation of how in- and pre-service physics teachers respond to students’ explanations

Danijela dodlek, gorazd planinsic, and eugenia etkina, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010120 (2024) – published 5 april 2024.

Physics teachers are adept at identifying student reasoning in explanations, but in responding they primarily focus on correcting reasoning rather than building on existing student understanding.

Group dynamics in inquiry-based labs: Gender inequities and the efficacy of partner agreements

Matthew dew, emma hunt, viranga perera, jonathan perry, gregorio ponti, and andrew loveridge, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010121 (2024) – published 5 april 2024.

An examination of gender equity in lab roles when using lab partner agreements.

Testing quantum reasoning: Developing, validating, and application of a questionnaire

Moritz waitzmann, ruediger scholz, and susanne wessnigk, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010122 (2024) – published 5 april 2024.

A validated inventory to test quantum reasoning relative to probability, superposition, and interference at the secondary school level.

Beyond normalized gain: Improved comparison of physics educational outcomes

Elaine christman, paul miller, and john stewart, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010123 (2024) – published 9 april 2024.

Normalized gain should not be used to compare conceptual inventory outcomes for institutions with different student populations.

Substance-based and sequential reasoning about current: An example from a bulb-ranking task using a resources theoretical lens

Lauren c. bauman, trà huỳnh, and amy d. robertson, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010124 (2024) – published 12 april 2024.

Physics students can use substance-based reasoning about current in simple circuits in ways that can provide a productive starting place for instruction on circuits.

Motivation and needs of informal physics practitioners

Shams el-adawy, alexandra c. lau, eleanor c. sayre, and claudia fracchiolla, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010125 (2024) – published 11 april 2024.

The motivations and professional development needs of physicists who engage with the public, capturing the findings that can used as the basis for meaningful support of practitioners of informal physics.

Validation of two test anxiety scales for physics undergraduate courses through confirmatory factor analysis and Rasch analysis

Agostino cioffi, silvia galano, raffaella passeggia, and italo testa, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010126 (2024) – published 11 april 2024.

This article presents two versions of a validated scale to measure physics test anxiety.

Who and what gets recognized in peer recognition

Meagan sundstrom, l. n. simpfendoerfer, annie tan, ashley b. heim, and n. g. holmes, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010127 (2024) – published 15 april 2024.

There is a difference in the nature of the gender bias in student nominations of strong physics peers between lecture- and lab-based courses.

Analyzing interviews on computational thinking for introductory physics students: Toward a generalized assessment

Justin gambrell and eric brewe, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010128 (2024) – published 26 april 2024.

According to academic and industrial physicists, learning goals do not differ much between an introductory and a computationally-integrated introductory physics class.

How to evaluate students’ decisions in a data comparison problem: Correct decision for the wrong reasons?

Karel kok, sophia chroszczinsky, and burkhard priemer, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010129 (2024) – published 26 april 2024.

Students give correct answers for the wrong reasons in multiple-choice problems when comparing datasets.

Metacognition and epistemic cognition in physics are related to physics identity through the mediation of physics self-efficacy

Yaren ulu and sevda yerdelen-damar, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010130 (2024) – published 26 april 2024.

Educational efforts that focus on reducing the gender gap in physics self-efficacy may result in reductions of the gender gap in physics identity, recognition, and interest.

Disparities in access to U.S. quantum information education

Josephine c. meyer, gina passante, and bethany wilcox, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010131 (2024) – published 2 may 2024.

Quantum information science education programs are less common in rural states and at institutions serving higher populations of low-income students, risking the exclusion of rural and low income populations from quantum careers.

Recognizing dominant cultures around assessment and educational change in physics programs

Diana sachmpazidi, chandra turpen, jayna petrella, robert p. dalka, and fatima n. abdurrahman, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010132 (2024) – published 3 may 2024.

Departments tend to take a rushed and ad hoc approach to departmental change and tend to ignore formal evidence.

Investigating peer recognition across an introductory physics sequence: Do first impressions last?

Meagan sundstrom and logan kageorge, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010133 (2024) – published 3 may 2024.

A longitudinal study using social network analysis reveals that patterns of peer recognition change over time, and that peer recognition is related to both student outspokenness and academic performance.

Enhancing peer instruction in physics: Understanding cognitive processes and refining rules

Vegard gjerde and sivert hagane, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010134 (2024) – published 3 may 2024.

Analysis of student discussions in Peer Instruction indicate students engage in decoding of problem statements, explanations with examples, and explanations with models.

Examining the mismatch between the intended astronomy curriculum content, astronomical literacy, and the astronomical universe

Saeed salimpour, michael fitzgerald, and robert hollow, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010135 (2024) – published 6 may 2024.

The K-12 astronomy curriculum in multiple countries is significantly disjointed, thus missing opportunities to engage students in deeper, more connected learning.

Self-efficacy changes and gender effects on self-efficacy in a large-scale robotic telescope focused curriculum

Rachel freed, david mckinnon, saeed salimpour, michael fitzgerald, dan reichart, and christina norris, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010137 (2024) – published 8 may 2024.

Introductory astronomy courses for nonmajors that include remote access to robotic telescopes can increase self-efficacy and reduce the gender gap.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics undergraduates’ knowledge and interest in quantum careers: Barriers and opportunities to building a diverse quantum workforce

Jessica l. rosenberg, nancy holincheck, and michele colandene, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010138 (2024) – published 8 may 2024.

It is important to develop information about and pathways into quantum careers that are accessible to undergraduate physics majors.

Investigating faculty perspectives on written qualifying exams in physics

Shiva basir and eric burkholder, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010139 (2024) – published 10 may 2024.

Faculty in one department agree that Ph.D. qualifying exams are both necessary and simultaneously doubt whether they predict success in research.

Prevalence of a growth mindset among introductory astronomy students

Moire k. m. prescott, laura madson, sandra m. way, and kelly n. sanderson, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010140 (2024) – published 10 may 2024.

Standard mindset surveys are not able to predict how an undergraduate student will actually behave when faced with the challenges of learning something new.

Investigating students’ insight after attending a planetarium presentation about the apparent motion of the Sun and stars

Hans bekaert, mieke de cock, wim van dooren, and hans van winckel, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010141 (2024) – published 13 may 2024.

Regular instruction is not sufficient to help secondary students develop a good understanding of the apparent motion of the Sun and stars.

Implementation of the photovoice methodology in a project-based upper-division physics course

Kristin a. oliver, victoria borish, bethany r. wilcox, and h. j. lewandowski, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010142 (2024) – published 16 may 2024.

Photovoice methodology can provide insights into student experiences and perspectives that may not be captured through traditional reflection questions.

Learning difficulties among students when applying Ampére-Maxwell’s law and its implications for teaching

Álvaro suárez, arturo c. marti, kristina zuza, and jenaro guisasola, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010143 (2024) – published 16 may 2024.

Introductory physics students do not develop a robust understanding of Ampere-Maxwell’s law through typical physics instruction.

Importance of undergraduate institution prestige in physics faculty hiring networks

Daniel z. grunspan, regis komperda, erika g. offerdahl, anna e. abraham, sara etebari, samantha a. maas, julie a. roberts, suhail ghafoor, and sara e. brownell, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010144 (2024) – published 20 may 2024.

A small fraction of institutions are responsible for the undergraduate education of a disproportionate number of U.S. physics faculty.

Modeling novel physics in virtual reality labs: An affective analysis of student learning

Jared p. canright and suzanne white brahmia, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010146 (2024) – published 28 may 2024.

Examining student attitudes about virtual reality experiments that involve modeling the behavior of fictitious exotic matter.

Utilizing network analysis to explore student qualitative inferential reasoning chains

J. caleb speirs, mackenzie r. stetzer, and beth a. lindsey, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010147 (2024) – published 29 may 2024.

Network analysis metrics are both interpretable and valuable when applied to student reasoning data generated from reasoning-related tasks.

REVIEW ARTICLES

Exploring gender differences in the force concept inventory using a random effects meta-analysis of international studies, purwoko haryadi santoso, bayu setiaji, wahyudi, johan syahbrudin, syamsul bahri, fathurrahman, a. suci rizky ananda, and yusuf sodhiqin, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 010601 (2024) – published 10 april 2024.

Mean Force Concept Inventory scores are higher for male students than female students in both North American and non North American studies.

Comment on “Examining the effect of counternarratives about physics on women’s physics career intentions”

M. b. weissman and j. m. robins, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 018001 (2024) – published 22 march 2024, reply to “comment on ‘examining the effect of counternarratives about physics on women’s physics career intentions’ ”, geoff potvin, zahra hazari, raina khatri, hemeng cheng, t. blake head, robynne m. lock, anne f. kornahrens, kathryne sparks woodle, rebecca e. vieyra, beth a. cunningham, laird kramer, and theodore hodapp, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 20 , 018002 (2024) – published 22 march 2024.

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• Position paper
• Open access
• Published: 28 November 2019

Physics education research for 21 st century learning

• Lei Bao   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-3348-4198 1 &
• Kathleen Koenig 2  

Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Science Education Research volume  1 , Article number:  2 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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Education goals have evolved to emphasize student acquisition of the knowledge and attributes necessary to successfully contribute to the workforce and global economy of the twenty-first Century. The new education standards emphasize higher end skills including reasoning, creativity, and open problem solving. Although there is substantial research evidence and consensus around identifying essential twenty-first Century skills, there is a lack of research that focuses on how the related subskills interact and develop over time. This paper provides a brief review of physics education research as a means for providing a context towards future work in promoting deep learning and fostering abilities in high-end reasoning. Through a synthesis of the literature around twenty-first Century skills and physics education, a set of concretely defined education and research goals are suggested for future research, along with how these may impact the next generation physics courses and how physics should be taught in the future.

Introduction

Education is the primary service offered by society to prepare its future generation workforce. The goals of education should therefore meet the demands of the changing world. The concept of learner-centered, active learning has broad, growing support in the research literature as an empirically validated teaching practice that best promotes learning for modern day students (Freeman et al., 2014 ). It stems out of the constructivist view of learning, which emphasizes that it is the learner who needs to actively construct knowledge and the teacher should assume the role of a facilitator rather than the source of knowledge. As implied by the constructivist view, learner-centered education usually emphasizes active-engagement and inquiry style teaching-learning methods, in which the learners can effectively construct their understanding under the guidance of instruction. The learner-centered education also requires educators and researchers to focus their efforts on the learners’ needs, not only to deliver effective teaching-learning approaches, but also to continuously align instructional practices to the education goals of the times. The goals of introductory college courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines have constantly evolved from some notion of weed-out courses that emphasize content drilling, to the current constructivist active-engagement type of learning that promotes interest in STEM careers and fosters high-end cognitive abilities.

Following the conceptually defined framework of twenty-first Century teaching and learning, this paper aims to provide contextualized operational definitions of the goals for twenty-first Century learning in physics (and STEM in general) as well as the rationale for the importance of these outcomes for current students. Aligning to the twenty-first Century learning goals, research in physics education is briefly reviewed to provide a context towards future work in promoting deep learning and fostering abilities in high-end reasoning in parallel. Through a synthesis of the literature around twenty-first Century skills and physics education, a set of concretely defined education and research goals are suggested for future research. These goals include: domain-specific research in physics learning; fostering scientific reasoning abilities that are transferable across the STEM disciplines; and dissemination of research-validated curriculum and approaches to teaching and learning. Although this review has a focus on physics education research (PER), it is beneficial to expand the perspective to view physics education in the broader context of STEM learning. Therefore, much of the discussion will blend PER with STEM education as a continuum body of work on teaching and learning.

Education goals for twenty-first century learning

Education goals have evolved to emphasize student acquisition of essential “21 st Century skills”, which define the knowledge and attributes necessary to successfully contribute to the workforce and global economy of the 21st Century (National Research Council, 2011 , 2012a ). In general, these standards seek to transition from emphasizing content-based drilling and memorization towards fostering higher-end skills including reasoning, creativity, and open problem solving (United States Chamber of Commerce, 2017 ). Initiatives on advancing twenty-first Century education focus on skills that converge on three broad clusters: cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal, all of which include a rich set of sub-dimensions.

Within the cognitive domain, multiple competencies have been proposed, including deep learning, non-routine problem solving, systems thinking, critical thinking, computational and information literacy, reasoning and argumentation, and innovation (National Research Council, 2012b ; National Science and Technology Council, 2018 ). Interpersonal skills are those necessary for relating to others, including the ability to work creatively and collaboratively as well as communicate clearly. Intrapersonal skills, on the other hand, reside within the individual and include metacognitive thinking, adaptability, and self-management. These involve the ability to adjust one’s strategy or approach along with the ability to work towards important goals without significant distraction, both essential for sustained success in long-term problem solving and career development.

Although many descriptions exist for what qualifies as twenty-first Century skills, student abilities in scientific reasoning and critical thinking are the most commonly noted and widely studied. They are highly connected with the other cognitive skills of problem solving, decision making, and creative thinking (Bailin, 1996 ; Facione, 1990 ; Fisher, 2001 ; Lipman, 2003 ; Marzano et al., 1988 ), and have been important educational goals since the 1980s (Binkley et al., 2010 ; NCET, 1987 ). As a result, they play a foundational role in defining, assessing, and developing twenty-first Century skills.

The literature for critical thinking is extensive (Bangert-Drowns & Bankert, 1990 ; Facione, 1990 ; Glaser, 1941 ). Various definitions exist with common underlying principles. Broadly defined, critical thinking is the application of the cognitive skills and strategies that aim for and support evidence-based decision making. It is the thinking involved in solving problems, formulating inferences, calculating likelihoods, and making decisions (Halpern, 1999 ). It is the “reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding what to believe or do” (Ennis, 1993 ). Critical thinking is recognized as a way to understand and evaluate subject matter; producing reliable knowledge and improving thinking itself (Paul, 1990 ; Siegel, 1988 ).

The notion of scientific reasoning is often used to label the set of skills that support critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity in STEM. Broadly defined, scientific reasoning includes the thinking and reasoning skills involved in inquiry, experimentation, evidence evaluation, inference and argument that support the formation and modification of concepts and theories about the natural world; such as the ability to systematically explore a problem, formulate and test hypotheses, manipulate and isolate variables, and observe and evaluate consequences (Bao et al., 2009 ; Zimmerman, 2000 ). Critical thinking and scientific reasoning share many features, where both emphasize evidence-based decision making in multivariable causal conditions. Critical thinking can be promoted through the development of scientific reasoning, which includes student ability to reach a reliable conclusion after identifying a question, formulating hypotheses, gathering relevant data, and logically testing and evaluating the hypothesis. In this way, scientific reasoning can be viewed as a scientific domain instantiation of critical thinking in the context of STEM learning.

In STEM learning, cognitive aspects of the twenty-first Century skills aim to develop reasoning skills, critical thinking skills, and deep understanding, all of which allow students to develop well connected expert-like knowledge structures and engage in meaningful scientific inquiry and problem solving. Within physics education, a core component of STEM education, the learning of conceptual understanding and problem solving remains a current emphasis. However, the fast-changing work environment and technology-driven world require a new set of core knowledge, skills, and habits of mind to solve complex interdisciplinary problems, gather and evaluate evidence, and make sense of information from a variety of sources (Tanenbaum, 2016 ). The education goals in physics are transitioning towards ability fostering as well as extension and integration with other STEM disciplines. Although curriculum that supports these goals is limited, there are a number of attempts, particularly in developing active learning classrooms and inquiry-based laboratory activities, which have demonstrated success. Some of these are described later in this paper as they provide a foundation for future work in physics education.

Interpersonal skills, such as communication and collaboration, are also essential for twenty-first Century problem-solving tasks, which are often open-ended, complex, and team-based. As the world becomes more connected in a multitude of dimensions, tackling significant problems involving complex systems often goes beyond the individual and requires working with others who are increasingly from culturally diverse backgrounds. Due to the rise of communication technologies, being able to articulate thoughts and ideas in a variety of formats and contexts is crucial, as well as the ability to effectively listen or observe to decipher meaning. Interpersonal skills can be promoted by integrating group-learning experiences into the classroom setting, while providing students with the opportunity to engage in open-ended tasks with a team of peer learners who may propose more than one plausible solution. These experiences should be designed such that students must work collaboratively and responsibly in teams to develop creative solutions, which are later disseminated through informative presentations and clearly written scientific reports. Although educational settings in general have moved to providing students with more and more opportunities for collaborative learning, a lack of effective assessments for these important skills has been a limiting factor for producing informative research and widespread implementation. See Liu ( 2010 ) for an overview of measurement instruments reported in the research literature.

Intrapersonal skills are based on the individual and include the ability to manage one’s behavior and emotions to achieve goals. These are especially important for adapting in the fast-evolving collaborative modern work environment and for learning new tasks to solve increasingly challenging interdisciplinary problems, both of which require intellectual openness, work ethic, initiative, and metacognition, to name a few. These skills can be promoted using instruction which, for example, includes metacognitive learning strategies, provides opportunities to make choices and set goals for learning, and explicitly connects to everyday life events. However, like interpersonal skills, the availability of relevant assessments challenges advancement in this area. In this review, the vast amount of studies on interpersonal and intrapersonal skills will not be discussed in order to keep the main focus on the cognitive side of skills and reasoning.

The purpose behind discussing twenty-first Century skills is that this set of skills provides important guidance for establishing essential education goals for modern society and learners. However, although there is substantial research evidence and consensus around identifying necessary twenty-first Century skills, there is a lack of research that focuses on how the related subskills interact and develop over time (Reimers & Chung, 2016 ), with much of the existing research residing in academic literature that is focused on psychology rather than education systems (National Research Council, 2012a ). Therefore, a major and challenging task for discipline-based education researchers and educators is to operationally define discipline-specific goals that align with the twenty-first Century skills for each of the STEM fields. In the following sections, this paper will provide a limited vision of the research endeavors in physics education that can translate the past and current success into sustained impact for twenty-first Century teaching and learning.

Proposed education and research goals

Physics education research (PER) is often considered an early pioneer in discipline-based education research (National Research Council, 2012c ), with well-established, broad, and influential outcomes (e.g., Hake, 1998 ; Hsu, Brewe, Foster, & Harper, 2004 ; McDermott & Redish, 1999 ; Meltzer & Thornton, 2012 ). Through the integration of twenty-first Century skills with the PER literature, a set of broadly defined education and research goals is proposed for future PER work:

Discipline-specific deep learning: Cognitive and education research involving physics learning has established a rich literature on student learning behaviors along with a number of frameworks. Some of the popular frameworks include conceptual understanding and concept change, problem solving, knowledge structure, deep learning, and knowledge integration. Aligned with twenty-first Century skills, future research in physics learning should aim to integrate the multiple areas of existing work, such that they help students develop well integrated knowledge structures in order to achieve deep leaning in physics.

Fostering scientific reasoning for transfer across STEM disciplines: The broad literature in physics learning and scientific reasoning can provide a solid foundation to further develop effective physics education approaches, such as active engagement instruction and inquiry labs, specifically targeting scientific inquiry abilities and reasoning skills. Since scientific reasoning is a more domain-general cognitive ability, success in physics can also more readily inform research and education practices in other STEM fields.

Research, development, assessment, and dissemination of effective education approaches: Developing and maintaining a supportive infrastructure of education research and implementation has always been a challenge, not only in physics but in all STEM areas. The twenty-first Century education requires researchers and instructors across STEM to work together as an extended community in order to construct a sustainable integrated STEM education environment. Through this new infrastructure, effective team-based inquiry learning and meaningful assessment can be delivered to help students develop a comprehensive skills set including deep understanding and scientific reasoning, as well as communication and other non-cognitive abilities.

The suggested research will generate understanding and resources to support education practices that meet the requirements of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which explicitly emphasize three areas of learning including disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and practices (National Research Council, 2012b ). The first goal for promoting deep learning of disciplinary knowledge corresponds well to the NGSS emphasis on disciplinary core ideas, which play a central role in helping students develop well integrated knowledge structures to achieve deep understanding. The second goal on fostering transferable scientific reasoning skills supports the NGSS emphasis on crosscutting concepts and practices. Scientific reasoning skills are crosscutting cognitive abilities that are essential to the development of domain-general concepts and modeling strategies. In addition, the development of scientific reasoning requires inquiry-based learning and practices. Therefore, research on scientific reasoning can produce a valuable knowledge base on education means that are effective for developing crosscutting concepts and promoting meaningful practices in STEM. The third research goal addresses the challenge in the assessment of high-end skills and the dissemination of effective educational approaches, which supports all NGSS initiatives to ensure sustainable development and lasting impact. The following sections will discuss the research literature that provides the foundation for these three research goals and identify the specific challenges that will need to be addressed in future work.

Promoting deep learning in physics education

Physics education for the twenty-first Century aims to foster high-end reasoning skills and promote deep conceptual understanding. However, many traditional education systems place strong emphasis on only problem solving with the expectation that students obtain deep conceptual understanding through repetitive problem-solving practices, which often doesn’t occur (Alonso, 1992 ). This focus on problem solving has been shown to have limitations as a number of studies have revealed disconnections between learning conceptual understanding and problem-solving skills (Chiu, 2001 ; Chiu, Guo, & Treagust, 2007 ; Hoellwarth, Moelter, & Knight, 2005 ; Kim & Pak, 2002 ; Nakhleh, 1993 ; Nakhleh & Mitchell, 1993 ; Nurrenbern & Pickering, 1987 ; Stamovlasis, Tsaparlis, Kamilatos, Papaoikonomou, & Zarotiadou, 2005 ). In fact, drilling in problem solving may actually promote memorization of context-specific solutions with minimal generalization rather than transitioning students from novices to experts.

Towards conceptual understanding and learning, many models and definitions have been established to study and describe student conceptual knowledge states and development. For example, students coming into a physics classroom often hold deeply rooted, stable understandings that differ from expert conceptions. These are commonly referred to as misconceptions or alternative conceptions (Clement, 1982 ; Duit & Treagust, 2003 ; Dykstra Jr, Boyle, & Monarch, 1992 ; Halloun & Hestenes, 1985a , 1985b ). Such students’ conceptions are context dependent and exist as disconnected knowledge fragments, which are strongly situated within specific contexts (Bao & Redish, 2001 , 2006 ; Minstrell, 1992 ).

In modeling students’ knowledge structures, DiSessa’s proposed phenomenological primitives (p-prim) describe a learner’s implicit thinking, cued from specific contexts, as an underpinning cognitive construct for a learner’s expressed conception (DiSessa, 1993 ; Smith III, DiSessa, & Roschelle, 1994 ). Facets, on the other hand, map between the implicit p-prim and concrete statements of beliefs and are developed as discrete and independent units of thought, knowledge, or strategies used by individuals to address specific situations (Minstrell, 1992 ). Ontological categories, defined by Chi, describe student reasoning in the most general sense. Chi believed that these are distinct, stable, and constraining, and that a core reason behind novices’ difficulties in physics is that they think of physics within the category of matter instead of processes (Chi, 1992 ; Chi & Slotta, 1993 ; Chi, Slotta, & De Leeuw, 1994 ; Slotta, Chi, & Joram, 1995 ). More details on conceptual learning and problem solving are well summarized in the literature (Hsu et al., 2004 ; McDermott & Redish, 1999 ), from which a common theme emerges from the models and definitions. That is, learning is context dependent and students with poor conceptual understanding typically have locally connected knowledge structures with isolated conceptual constructs that are unable to establish similarities and contrasts between contexts.

Additionally, this idea of fragmentation is demonstrated through many studies on student problem solving in physics and other fields. It has been shown that a student’s knowledge organization is a key aspect for distinguishing experts from novices (Bagno, Eylon, & Ganiel, 2000 ; Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981 ; De Jong & Ferguson-Hesler, 1986 ; Eylon & Reif, 1984 ; Ferguson-Hesler & De Jong, 1990 ; Heller & Reif, 1984 ; Larkin, McDermott, Simon, & Simon, 1980 ; Smith, 1992 ; Veldhuis, 1990 ; Wexler, 1982 ). Expert’s knowledge is organized around core principles of physics, which are applied to guide problem solving and develop connections between different domains as well as new, unfamiliar situations (Brown, 1989 ; Perkins & Salomon, 1989 ; Salomon & Perkins, 1989 ). Novices, on the other hand, lack a well-organized knowledge structure and often solve problems by relying on surface features that are directly mapped to certain problem-solving outcomes through memorization (Chi, Bassok, Lewis, Reimann, & Glaser, 1989 ; Hardiman, Dufresne, & Mestre, 1989 ; Schoenfeld & Herrmann, 1982 ).

This lack of organization creates many difficulties in the comprehension of basic concepts and in solving complex problems. This leads to the common complaint that students’ knowledge of physics is reduced to formulas and vague labels of the concepts, which are unable to substantively contribute to meaningful reasoning processes. A novice’s fragmented knowledge structure severely limits the learner’s conceptual understanding. In essence, these students are able to memorize how to approach a problem given specific information but lack the understanding of the underlying concept of the approach, limiting their ability to apply this approach to a novel situation. In order to achieve expert-like understanding, a student’s knowledge structure must integrate all of the fragmented ideas around the core principle to form a coherent and fully connected conceptual framework.

Towards a more general theoretical consideration, students’ alternative conceptions and fragmentation in knowledge structures can be viewed through both the “naïve theory” framework (e.g., Posner, Strike, Hewson, & Gertzog, 1982 ; Vosniadou, Vamvakoussi, & Skopeliti, 2008 ) and the “knowledge in pieces” (DiSessa, 1993 ) perspective. The “naïve theory” framework considers students entering the classroom with stable and coherent ideas (naïve theories) about the natural world that differ from those presented by experts. In the “knowledge in pieces” perspective, student knowledge is constructed in real-time and incorporates context features with the p-prims to form the observed conceptual expressions. Although there exists an ongoing debate between these two views (Kalman & Lattery, 2018 ), it is more productive to focus on their instructional implications for promoting meaningful conceptual change in students’ knowledge structures.

In the process of learning, students may enter the classroom with a range of initial states depending on the population and content. For topics with well-established empirical experiences, students often have developed their own ideas and understanding, while on topics without prior exposure, students may create their initial understanding in real-time based on related prior knowledge and given contextual features (Bao & Redish, 2006 ). These initial states of understanding, regardless of their origin, are usually different from those of experts. Therefore, the main function of teaching and learning is to guide students to modify their initial understanding towards the experts’ views. Although students’ initial understanding may exist as a body of coherent ideas within limited contexts, as students start to change their knowledge structures throughout the learning process, they may evolve into a wide range of transitional states with varying levels of knowledge integration and coherence. The discussion in this brief review on students’ knowledge structures regarding fragmentation and integration are primarily focused on the transitional stages emerged through learning.

The corresponding instructional goal is then to help students more effectively develop an integrated knowledge structure so as to achieve a deep conceptual understanding. From an educator’s perspective, Bloom’s taxonomy of education objectives establishes a hierarchy of six levels of cognitive skills based on their specificity and complexity: Remember (lowest and most specific), Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create (highest and most general and complex) (Anderson et al., 2001 ; Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956 ). This hierarchy of skills exemplifies the transition of a learner’s cognitive development from a fragmented and contextually situated knowledge structure (novice with low level cognitive skills) to a well-integrated and globally networked expert-like structure (with high level cognitive skills).

As a student’s learning progresses from lower to higher cognitive levels, the student’s knowledge structure becomes more integrated and is easier to transfer across contexts (less context specific). For example, beginning stage students may only be able to memorize and perform limited applications of the features of certain contexts and their conditional variations, with which the students were specifically taught. This leads to the establishment of a locally connected knowledge construct. When a student’s learning progresses from the level of Remember to Understand, the student begins to develop connections among some of the fragmented pieces to form a more fully connected network linking a larger set of contexts, thus advancing into a higher level of understanding. These connections and the ability to transfer between different situations form the basis of deep conceptual understanding. This growth of connections leads to a more complete and integrated cognitive structure, which can be mapped to a higher level on Bloom’s taxonomy. This occurs when students are able to relate a larger number of different contextual and conditional aspects of a concept for analyzing and evaluating to a wider variety of problem situations.

Promoting the growth of connections would appear to aid in student learning. Exactly which teaching methods best facilitate this are dependent on the concepts and skills being learned and should be determined through research. However, it has been well recognized that traditional instruction often fails to help students obtain expert-like conceptual understanding, with many misconceptions still existing after instruction, indicating weak integration within a student’s knowledge structure (McKeachie, 1986 ).

Recognizing the failures of traditional teaching, various research-informed teaching methods have been developed to enhance student conceptual learning along with diagnostic tests, which aim to measure the existence of misconceptions. Most advances in teaching methods focus on the inclusion of inquiry-based interactive-engagement elements in lecture, recitations, and labs. In physics education, these methods were popularized after Hake’s landmark study demonstrated the effectiveness of interactive-engagement over traditional lectures (Hake, 1998 ). Some of these methods include the use of peer instruction (Mazur, 1997 ), personal response systems (e.g., Reay, Bao, Li, Warnakulasooriya, & Baugh, 2005 ), studio-style instruction (Beichner et al., 2007 ), and inquiry-based learning (Etkina & Van Heuvelen, 2001 ; Laws, 2004 ; McDermott, 1996 ; Thornton & Sokoloff, 1998 ). The key approach of these methods aims to improve student learning by carefully targeting deficits in student knowledge and actively encouraging students to explore and discuss. Rather than rote memorization, these approaches help promote generalization and deeper conceptual understanding by building connections between knowledge elements.

Based on the literature, including Bloom’s taxonomy and the new education standards that emphasize twenty-first Century skills, a common focus on teaching and learning can be identified. This focus emphasizes helping students develop connections among fragmented segments of their knowledge pieces and is aligned with the knowledge integration perspective, which focuses on helping students develop and refine their knowledge structure toward a more coherently organized and extensively connected network of ideas (Lee, Liu, & Linn, 2011 ; Linn, 2005 ; Nordine, Krajcik, & Fortus, 2011 ; Shen, Liu, & Chang, 2017 ). For meaningful learning to occur, new concepts must be integrated into a learner’s existing knowledge structure by linking the new knowledge to already understood concepts.

Forming an integrated knowledge structure is therefore essential to achieving deep learning, not only in physics but also in all STEM fields. However, defining what connections must occur at different stages of learning, as well as understanding the instructional methods necessary for effectively developing such connections within each STEM disciplinary context, are necessary for current and future research. Together these will provide the much needed foundational knowledge base to guide the development of the next generation of curriculum and classroom environment designed around twenty-first Century learning.

Developing scientific reasoning with inquiry labs

Scientific reasoning is part of the widely emphasized cognitive strand of twenty-first Century skills. Through development of scientific reasoning skills, students’ critical thinking, open-ended problem-solving abilities, and decision-making skills can be improved. In this way, targeting scientific reasoning as a curricular objective is aligned with the goals emphasized in twenty-first Century education. Also, there is a growing body of research on the importance of student development of scientific reasoning, which have been found to positively correlate with course achievement (Cavallo, Rozman, Blickenstaff, & Walker, 2003 ; Johnson & Lawson, 1998 ), improvement on concept tests (Coletta & Phillips, 2005 ; She & Liao, 2010 ), engagement in higher levels of problem solving (Cracolice, Deming, & Ehlert, 2008 ; Fabby & Koenig, 2013 ); and success on transfer (Ates & Cataloglu, 2007 ; Jensen & Lawson, 2011 ).

Unfortunately, research has shown that college students are lacking in scientific reasoning. Lawson ( 1992 ) found that ~ 50% of intro biology students are not capable of applying scientific reasoning in learning, including the ability to develop hypotheses, control variables, and design experiments; all necessary for meaningful scientific inquiry. Research has also found that traditional courses do not significantly develop these abilities, with pre-to-post-test gains of 1%–2%, while inquiry-based courses have gains around 7% (Koenig, Schen, & Bao, 2012 ; Koenig, Schen, Edwards, & Bao, 2012 ). Others found that undergraduates have difficulty developing evidence-based decisions and differentiating between and linking evidence with claims (Kuhn, 1992 ; Shaw, 1996 ; Zeineddin & Abd-El-Khalick, 2010 ). A large scale international study suggested that learning of physics content knowledge with traditional teaching practices does not improve students’ scientific reasoning skills (Bao et al., 2009 ).

Aligned to twenty-first Century learning, it is important to implement curriculum that is specifically designed for developing scientific reasoning abilities within current education settings. Although traditional lectures may continue for decades due to infrastructure constraints, a unique opportunity can be found in the lab curriculum, which may be more readily transformed to include hands-on minds-on group learning activities that are ideal for developing students’ abilities in scientific inquiry and reasoning.

For well over a century, the laboratory has held a distinctive role in student learning (Meltzer & Otero, 2015 ). However, many existing labs, which haven’t changed much since the late 1980s, have received criticism for their outdated cookbook style that lacks effectiveness in developing high-end skills. In addition, labs have been primarily used as a means for verifying the physical principles presented in lecture, and unfortunately, Hofstein and Lunetta ( 1982 ) found in an early review of the literature that research was unable to demonstrate the impact of the lab on student content learning.

About this same time, a shift towards a constructivist view of learning gained popularity and influenced lab curriculum development towards engaging students in the process of constructing knowledge through science inquiry. Curricula, such as Physics by Inquiry (McDermott, 1996 ), Real-Time Physics (Sokoloff, Thornton, & Laws, 2011 ), and Workshop Physics (Laws, 2004 ), were developed with a primary focus on engaging students in cognitive conflict to address misconceptions. Although these approaches have been shown to be highly successful in improving deep learning of physics concepts (McDermott & Redish, 1999 ), the emphasis on conceptual learning does not sufficiently impact the domain general scientific reasoning skills necessitated in the goals of twenty-first Century learning.

Reform in science education, both in terms of targeted content and skills, along with the emergence of knowledge regarding human cognition and learning (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000 ), have generated renewed interest in the potential of inquiry-based lab settings for skill development. In these types of hands-on minds-on learning, students apply the methods and procedures of science inquiry to investigate phenomena and construct scientific claims, solve problems, and communicate outcomes, which holds promise for developing both conceptual understanding and scientific reasoning skills in parallel (Trowbridge, Bybee, & Powell, 2000 ). In addition, the availability of technology to enhance inquiry-based learning has seen exponential growth, along with the emergence of more appropriate research methodologies to support research on student learning.

Although inquiry-based labs hold promise for developing students’ high-end reasoning, analytic, and scientific inquiry abilities, these educational endeavors have not become widespread, with many existing physics laboratory courses still viewed merely as a place to illustrate the physical principles from the lecture course (Meltzer & Otero, 2015 ). Developing scientific ideas from practical experiences, however, is a complex process. Students need sufficient time and opportunity for interaction and reflection on complex, investigative tasks. Blended learning, which merges lecture and lab (such as studio style courses), addresses this issue to some extent, but has experienced limited adoption, likely due to the demanding infrastructure resources, including dedicated technology-intensive classroom space, equipment and maintenance costs, and fully committed trained staff.

Therefore, there is an immediate need to transform the existing standalone lab courses, within the constraints of the existing education infrastructure, into more inquiry-based designs, with one of its primary goals dedicated to developing scientific reasoning skills. These labs should center on constructing knowledge, along with hands-on minds-on practical skills and scientific reasoning, to support modeling a problem, designing and implementing experiments, analyzing and interpreting data, drawing and evaluating conclusions, and effective communication. In particular, training on scientific reasoning needs to be explicitly addressed in the lab curriculum, which should contain components specifically targeting a set of operationally-defined scientific reasoning skills, such as ability to control variables or engage in multivariate causal reasoning. Although effective inquiry may also implicitly develop some aspects of scientific reasoning skills, such development is far less efficient and varies with context when the primary focus is on conceptual learning.

Several recent efforts to enhance the standalone lab course have shown promise in supporting education goals that better align with twenty-first Century learning. For example, the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE) labs involve a series of tasks designed to help students develop the “habits of mind” of scientists and engineers (Etkina et al., 2006 ). The curriculum targets reasoning as well as the lab learning outcomes published by the American Association of Physics Teachers (Kozminski et al., 2014 ). Operationally, ISLE methods focus on scaffolding students’ developing conceptual understanding using inquiry learning without a heavy emphasis on cognitive conflict, making it more appropriate and effective for entry level students and K-12 teachers.

Likewise, Koenig, Wood, Bortner, and Bao ( 2019 ) have developed a lab curriculum that is intentionally designed around the twenty-first Century learning goals for developing cognitive, interpersonal, and intrapersonal abilities. In terms of the cognitive domain, the lab learning outcomes center on critical thinking and scientific reasoning but do so through operationally defined sub-skills, all of which are transferrable across STEM. These selected sub-skills are found in the research literature, and include the ability to control variables and engage in data analytics and causal reasoning. For each targeted sub-skill, a series of pre-lab and in-class activities provide students with repeated, deliberate practice within multiple hypothetical science-based scenarios followed by real inquiry-based lab contexts. This explicit instructional strategy has been shown to be essential for the development of scientific reasoning (Chen & Klahr, 1999 ). In addition, the Karplus Learning Cycle (Karplus, 1964 ) provides the foundation for the structure of the lab activities and involves cycles of exploration, concept introduction, and concept application. The curricular framework is such that as the course progresses, the students engage in increasingly complex tasks, which allow students the opportunity to learn gradually through a progression from simple to complex skills.

As part of this same curriculum, students’ interpersonal skills are developed, in part, through teamwork, as students work in groups of 3 or 4 to address open-ended research questions, such as, What impacts the period of a pendulum? In addition, due to time constraints, students learn early on about the importance of working together in an efficient manor towards a common goal, with one set of written lab records per team submitted after each lab. Checkpoints built into all in-class activities involve Socratic dialogue between the instructor and students and promote oral communication. This use of directed questioning guides students in articulating their reasoning behind decisions and claims made, while supporting the development of scientific reasoning and conceptual understanding in parallel (Hake, 1992 ). Students’ intrapersonal skills, as well as communication skills, are promoted through the submission of individual lab reports. These reports require students to reflect upon their learning over each of four multi-week experiments and synthesize their ideas into evidence-based arguments, which support a claim. Due to the length of several weeks over which students collect data for each of these reports, the ability to organize the data and manage their time becomes essential.

Despite the growing emphasis on research and development of curriculum that targets twenty-first Century learning, converting a traditionally taught lab course into a meaningful inquiry-based learning environment is challenging in current reform efforts. Typically, the biggest challenge is a lack of resources; including faculty time to create or adapt inquiry-based materials for the local setting, training faculty and graduate student instructors who are likely unfamiliar with this approach, and the potential cost of new equipment. Koenig et al. ( 2019 ) addressed these potential implementation barriers by designing curriculum with these challenges in mind. That is, the curriculum was designed as a flexible set of modules that target specific sub-skills, with each module consisting of pre-lab (hypothetical) and in-lab (real) activities. Each module was designed around a curricular framework such that an adopting institution can use the materials as written, or can incorporate their existing equipment and experiments into the framework with minimal effort. Other non-traditional approaches have also been experimented with, such as the work by Sobhanzadeh, Kalman, and Thompson ( 2017 ), which targets typical misconceptions by using conceptual questions to engage students in making a prediction, designing and conducting a related experiment, and determining whether or not the results support the hypothesis.

Another challenge for inquiry labs is the assessment of skills-based learning outcomes. For assessment of scientific reasoning, a new instrument on inquiry in scientific thinking analytics and reasoning (iSTAR) has been developed, which can be easily implemented across large numbers of students as both a pre- and post-test to assess gains. iSTAR assesses reasoning skills necessary in the systematical conduct of scientific inquiry, which includes the ability to explore a problem, formulate and test hypotheses, manipulate and isolate variables, and observe and evaluate the consequences (see www.istarassessment.org ). The new instrument expands upon the commonly used classroom test of scientific reasoning (Lawson, 1978 , 2000 ), which has been identified with a number of validity weaknesses and a ceiling effect for college students (Bao, Xiao, Koenig, & Han, 2018 ).

Many education innovations need supporting infrastructures that can ensure adoption and lasting impact. However, making large-scale changes to current education settings can be risky, if not impossible. New education approaches, therefore, need to be designed to adapt to current environmental constraints. Since higher-end skills are a primary focus of twenty-first Century learning, which are most effectively developed in inquiry-based group settings, transforming current lecture and lab courses into this new format is critical. Although this transformation presents great challenges, promising solutions have already emerged from various research efforts. Perhaps the biggest challenge is for STEM educators and researchers to form an alliance to work together to re-engineer many details of the current education infrastructure in order to overcome the multitude of implementation obstacles.

This paper attempts to identify a few central ideas to provide a broad picture for future research and development in physics education, or STEM education in general, to promote twenty-first Century learning. Through a synthesis of the existing literature within the authors’ limited scope, a number of views surface.

Education is a service to prepare (not to select) the future workforce and should be designed as learner-centered, with the education goals and teaching-learning methods tailored to the needs and characteristics of the learners themselves. Given space constraints, the reader is referred to the meta-analysis conducted by Freeman et al. ( 2014 ), which provides strong support for learner-centered instruction. The changing world of the twenty-first Century informs the establishment of new education goals, which should be used to guide research and development of teaching and learning for present day students. Aligned to twenty-first Century learning, the new science standards have set the goals for STEM education to transition towards promoting deep learning of disciplinary knowledge, thereby building upon decades of research in PER, while fostering a wide range of general high-end cognitive and non-cognitive abilities that are transferable across all disciplines.

Following these education goals, more research is needed to operationally define and assess the desired high-end reasoning abilities. Building on a clear definition with effective assessments, a large number of empirical studies are needed to investigate how high-end abilities can be developed in parallel with deep learning of concepts, such that what is learned can be generalized to impact the development of curriculum and teaching methods which promote skills-based learning across all STEM fields. Specifically for PER, future research should emphasize knowledge integration to promote deep conceptual understanding in physics along with inquiry learning to foster scientific reasoning. Integration of physics learning in contexts that connect to other STEM disciplines is also an area for more research. Cross-cutting, interdisciplinary connections are becoming important features of the future generation physics curriculum and defines how physics should be taught collaboratively with other STEM courses.

This paper proposed meaningful areas for future research that are aligned with clearly defined education goals for twenty-first Century learning. Based on the existing literature, a number of challenges are noted for future directions of research, including the need for:

clear and operational definitions of goals to guide research and practice

concrete operational definitions of high-end abilities for which students are expected to develop

effective assessment methods and instruments to measure high-end abilities and other components of twenty-first Century learning

a knowledge base of the curriculum and teaching and learning environments that effectively support the development of advanced skills

integration of knowledge and ability development regarding within-discipline and cross-discipline learning in STEM

effective means to disseminate successful education practices

The list is by no means exhaustive, but these themes emerge above others. In addition, the high-end abilities discussed in this paper focus primarily on scientific reasoning, which is highly connected to other skills, such as critical thinking, systems thinking, multivariable modeling, computational thinking, design thinking, etc. These abilities are expected to develop in STEM learning, although some may be emphasized more within certain disciplines than others. Due to the limited scope of this paper, not all of these abilities were discussed in detail but should be considered an integral part of STEM learning.

Finally, a metacognitive position on education research is worth reflection. One important understanding is that the fundamental learning mechanism hasn’t changed, although the context in which learning occurs has evolved rapidly as a manifestation of the fast-forwarding technology world. Since learning is a process at the interface between a learner’s mind and the environment, the main focus of educators should always be on the learner’s interaction with the environment, not just the environment. In recent education developments, many new learning platforms have emerged at an exponential rate, such as the massive open online courses (MOOCs), STEM creative labs, and other online learning resources, to name a few. As attractive as these may be, it is risky to indiscriminately follow trends in education technology and commercially-incentivized initiatives before such interventions are shown to be effective by research. Trends come and go but educators foster students who have only a limited time to experience education. Therefore, delivering effective education is a high-stakes task and needs to be carefully and ethically planned and implemented. When game-changing opportunities emerge, one needs to not only consider the winners (and what they can win), but also the impact on all that is involved.

Based on a century of education research, consensus has settled on a fundamental mechanism of teaching and learning, which suggests that knowledge is developed within a learner through constructive processes and that team-based guided scientific inquiry is an effective method for promoting deep learning of content knowledge as well as developing high-end cognitive abilities, such as scientific reasoning. Emerging technology and methods should serve to facilitate (not to replace) such learning by providing more effective education settings and conveniently accessible resources. This is an important relationship that should survive many generations of technological and societal changes in the future to come. From a physicist’s point of view, a fundamental relation like this can be considered the “mechanics” of teaching and learning. Therefore, educators and researchers should hold on to these few fundamental principles without being distracted by the surfacing ripples of the world’s motion forward.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

Abbreviations

American Association of Physics Teachers

Investigative Science Learning Environment

Inquiry in Scientific Thinking Analytics and Reasoning

Massive open online course

New Generation Science Standards

• Physics education research

Science Technology Engineering and Math

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This month in Nature Physics , we publish a Focus issue that highlights the importance of physics education research.

Physics curricula and education systems have remained largely unchanged for decades, and much can be done to improve them. For example, the well-documented lack of diversity in physics starts at undergraduate level. As a result, much potential talent is missed and the under-representation of minoritized groups is amplified at each career stage. Additionally, the aim of many physics courses is still to train students to work in academia, thus making graduates less prepared for careers in industry.

A Focus in this month’s issue of Nature Physics provides an overview of the current state of physics education research and offers recommendations on how to make learning environments more equitable and inclusive, diversify graduates’ skillsets and enable them to tackle important societal issues and challenges.

With teaching sometimes perceived as being forced on researchers as one of the many additional tasks they must accomplish and with little departmental support, tackling inequity and updating curricula can feel overwhelming. However, a Review about equity and inclusion in physics learning environments by Chandralekha Singh and Alexandru Maries stresses that a physics instructor’s mindset and intentions can have a significant impact on the diversity in physics courses.

Unthinking comments about the ‘triviality’ of an assignment or preconceptions about who can and cannot do physics will have hugely damaging effects on people from minoritized groups. Informing oneself of the effects of one’s attitude during teaching can be the first step to prevent setting up courses that widen existing gaps in achievement. These actions at the individual level must be supported by departments. Singh and Maries provide structural advice for physics departments as a whole and emphasize that simple interventions can empower all students.

In a similar vein, a Comment by Geraldine Cochran and coauthors analyses the specific example of racial equity in physics education research. They highlight that much research up until now has focused on elite universities with predominantly white student populations and advocate for an emphasis (both in focus and in funding) on intersectional research aimed at decolonizing physics research.

On a more practical level, the Focus issue includes two pieces about how to structure physics courses and how best to engage with the Gen-Zers — often defined as those born between 1997 and 2012 — who make up the majority of today’s undergraduate classes. In a Comment that discusses how to put together a physics curriculum for these so-called digital natives, Jenaro Guisasola and Kristina Zuza discuss the benefits of a student-centred active learning approach in physics courses. They argue that traditional, lecture-based methods are insufficient to prepare students for the increasingly wide range of potential careers outside of academia. Such active teaching should be done in conjunction with diversity, equity and inclusion discussions, and students should be encouraged to consider their identity as physicists and their role in society.

The benefits of active learning are further elaborated in a Perspective that places them in the context of the current generation of learners. Nam-Hwa Kang emphasizes the importance of considering the defining characteristics of the students currently going through the education system in order to set up an effective curriculum. Today’s students are unlikely to be satisfied with traditional teaching styles and need an education structure that lets them take responsibility for their own learning with the help of digital technology. This approach will not only benefit students’ understanding of physics but will also help them effect change in the world around them.

On the topic of digital technology, a Comment by Marcos D. Caballero and Tor Ole Odden describes how to effectively integrate scientific computing into undergraduate physics courses. As the reach and importance of computing grows, it is crucial that students understand its power and pitfalls. This is valuable transferrable knowledge that will help regardless of whether the students continue into academia or take jobs elsewhere.

We at Nature Physics publish this Focus issue to highlight both the importance of physics education research and our interest in publishing primary research in this field. We would like to invite the physics education research community to consider submitting their work to our journal.

If physics research is to become more useful and physics groups more diverse, innovating in physics education systems is a good place to start. Physics departments should give more attention and resources to teaching to help all students feel like valued members of the physics community. Make teaching more equitable and relevant so that everyone can thrive.

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Unlock the potential of a physics education. Nat. Phys. 20 , 335 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-024-02458-4

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Physics Education

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Physics Education is the international journal for everyone involved with the teaching of physics in schools and colleges. The articles reflect the needs and interests of secondary school teachers, teacher trainers and those involved with courses up to introductory undergraduate level.

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Paul Gluck 2011 Phys. Educ. 46 253

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Julia Woithe et al 2017 Phys. Educ. 52 034001

The Standard Model of particle physics is one of the most successful theories in physics and describes the fundamental interactions between elementary particles. It is encoded in a compact description, the so-called 'Lagrangian', which even fits on t-shirts and coffee mugs. This mathematical formulation, however, is complex and only rarely makes it into the physics classroom. Therefore, to support high school teachers in their challenging endeavour of introducing particle physics in the classroom, we provide a qualitative explanation of the terms of the Lagrangian and discuss their interpretation based on associated Feynman diagrams.

Ann-Marie Pendrill and David Eager 2020 Phys. Educ. 55 065012

Bor Gregorcic et al 2024 Phys. Educ. 59 045005

In this proof-of-concept paper, we propose a specific kind of pedagogical use of ChatGPT—to help teachers practice their Socratic dialogue skills. We follow up on the previously published paper 'ChatGPT and the frustrated Socrates' by re-examining ChatGPT's ability to engage in Socratic dialogue in the role of a physics student. While in late 2022 its ability to engage in such dialogue was poor, we see significant advancements in the chatbot's ability to respond to leading questions asked by a human teacher. We suggest that ChatGPT now has the potential to be used in teacher training to help pre- or in-service physics teachers hone their Socratic dialogue skills. In the paper and its supplemental material, we provide illustrative examples of Socratic dialogues with ChatGPT and present a report on a pilot activity involving pre-service physics and mathematics teachers conversing with it in a Socratic fashion.

Nathalie Wolke et al 2024 Phys. Educ. 59 045008

The disciplines of physics and art are often seen as antithetical in social and educational contexts. However, in recent years, STEAM education has promoted the collaboration of art and STEM. Linking the subjects together offers a wide range of learning opportunities. For example, the design of (video) light installations can develop both artistic and physical skills. Such a teaching approach allows to address different types of interests within the same lesson. In this article, two basic ways of meaningfully combining artistic and physical topics are presented: 'STEAM design' and 'STEAM explanation'. The approaches are described using the example of teaching optics at secondary school level, but in principle they can be applied to other grade levels or physical subjects.

Bor Gregorcic and Ann-Marie Pendrill 2023 Phys. Educ. 58 035021

We present a case study of a conversation between ourselves and an artificial intelligence-based chatbot ChatGPT. We asked the chatbot to respond to a basic physics question that will be familiar to most physics teachers: ' A teddy bear is thrown into the air. What is its acceleration in the highest point?' The chatbot's responses, while linguistically quite advanced, were unreliable in their correctness and often full of contradictions. We then attempted to engage in Socratic dialogue with the chatbot to resolve the errors and contradictions, but with little success. We found that ChatGPT is not yet good enough to be used as a cheating tool for physics students or as a physics tutor. However, we found it quite reliable in generating incorrect responses on which physics teachers could train assessment of student responses.

Fatih Önder 2024 Phys. Educ. 59 045011

Voltage regulators, the most common application of Zener diodes, are included in many electronic devices we use in our daily lives. Therefore, students need to learn about regulators to understand the place of Zener diodes in modern electronic technologies. This study focuses on a microcontroller-based experiment that can be used to teach line and load regulation with real-time graphics. The main advantage of the designed experiment over its classical equivalent is its ability to display autonomous and real-time data display. It also eliminates the problem of determining the load resistance, which is the main difficulty of the classical experiment.

Will Yeadon and Tom Hardy 2024 Phys. Educ. 59 025010

With the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI), its potential implications for higher education have become a focal point of interest. This study delves into the capabilities of AI in physics education and offers actionable AI policy recommendations. Using openAI's flagship gpt-3.5-turbo large language model (LLM), we assessed its ability to answer 1337 physics exam questions spanning general certificate of secondary education (GCSE), A-Level, and introductory university curricula. We employed various AI prompting techniques: Zero Shot, in context learning, and confirmatory checking, which merges chain of thought reasoning with reflection. The proficiency of gpt-3.5-turbo varied across academic levels: it scored an average of 83.4% on GCSE, 63.8% on A-Level, and 37.4% on university-level questions, with an overall average of 59.9% using the most effective prompting technique. In a separate test, the LLM's accuracy on 5000 mathematical operations was found to be 45.2%. When evaluated as a marking tool, the LLM's concordance with human markers averaged at 50.8%, with notable inaccuracies in marking straightforward questions, like multiple-choice. Given these results, our recommendations underscore caution: while current LLMs can consistently perform well on physics questions at earlier educational stages, their efficacy diminishes with advanced content and complex calculations. LLM outputs often showcase novel methods not in the syllabus, excessive verbosity, and miscalculations in basic arithmetic. This suggests that at university, there's no substantial threat from LLMs for non-invigilated physics questions. However, given the LLMs' considerable proficiency in writing physics essays and coding abilities, non-invigilated examinations of these skills in physics are highly vulnerable to automated completion by LLMs. This vulnerability also extends to pysics questions pitched at lower academic levels. It is thus recommended that educators be transparent about LLM capabilities with their students, while emphasizing caution against overreliance on their output due to its tendency to sound plausible but be incorrect.

Marcelo Dumas Hahn et al 2024 Phys. Educ. 59 045006

Teaching the colour of stars is not as trivial as one might think. It can be challenging for students to grasp that the colour of stars follows a temperature sequence. This paper introduces a simple experimental setup for instructing the correlation between a star's colour and its temperature. Furthermore, the experimental setup facilitates the exploration of the topic of colour addition, demonstrating to students how to replicate the colour of a star—a spectrum colour—by employing an RGB LED that emits only primary colours (red, green, and blue). The experiment utilised an Arduino microcontroller board in conjunction with RGB LEDs and an LCD display. The activity was conducted with 53 7th-grade students from a private school in Portugal results suggest a positive reception, indicating success in both motivational and cognitive aspects. The overall outcomes underscore the effectiveness of the activity in imparting new knowledge to students.

Will Yeadon et al 2023 Phys. Educ. 58 035027

Latest articles

Ahmed Madey 2024 Phys. Educ. 59 043005

In this paper the author is presenting a novel experiment for measuring the gravitational acceleration using simple and cost effective apparatus with a regular pendulum, composed of an Arduino Uno and a light interruption circuit with an light dependent resistor (LDR) and an light emitting diode (LED), the data was recorded using PLX  −  DAQ data acquisition tool for further analysis, the experiment would be useful for introductory physics courses on the subject.

Niyomufasha Theogene et al 2024 Phys. Educ. 59 045022

In recent years, the use of multiple representations in physics teaching and learning has become more common. This study sought to determine if engineering students' performance in Rwanda might be improved by the use of numerous representations when solving mechanics problems. Multiple representations improve students' comprehension and recall of mechanics ideas, supporting efficient teaching methods and critical thinking. This study employed a quasi-experimental research design with pre-and post-test control and experimental groups. A total of 100 students were enrolled in the study, divided into two groups: the experimental group consisted of 52 students who received instruction using multiple representations, and the control group consisted of 48 students who received instruction using traditional methods. In the study, students' performance was measured before and after intervention using a mechanics test. The mechanics problem-solving pre-test findings indicated a p -value greater than 0.05 between the control and experimental groups, indicating no statistically significant differences between the two groups. A post-test revealed a p -value < 0.001 between the groups, indicating that the experimental group outperformed the control group significantly. According to the findings, engineering student's academic performance in physics can be improved through the use of multiple representations in teaching and learning mechanics problem-solving. This study will support the development of Rwandan education policies, instructional approaches, and global pedagogy are all supported by this study.

Rick Marshall 2024 Phys. Educ. 59 046001

Sebastian Kilde Löfgren et al 2024 Phys. Educ. 59 045021

Classical mechanics has long been a conceptually challenging topic for students. Escape Experience Aeroseum offers a novel approach to help address this issue by integrating classical mechanics into an educational escape room (EER). The escape room creatively combines physics with aerospace engineering principles, with the aim of aiding learners in making more sense of classical mechanics concepts through solving interactive, hands-on challenges. In the paper, we discuss the design and educational potential of Escape Experience Aeroseum, including the need for adaptability and appeal across different educational settings. By introducing an EER centered around classical mechanics, this work contributes to the growing interest in developing and evaluating EERs as a possible means to increase students learning, engagement, and interest in physics.

Rafiq Mulla 2024 Phys. Educ. 59 043004

A simple do-it-yourself (DIY) apparatus is designed and built for the measurement of the electrical resistivity of materials. The tool is portable and easy to operate, and students/new researchers can build their own apparatus with a minimum amount of time and raw materials. The apparatus' spring-loaded four-point probes help provide a good electrical contact between the sample surface and the probes. It has been checked for its reliability by comparing the resistivity data with literature values and the measurements match well with the previous data. The apparatus is suitable for measurements from room temperature to ∼100 °C.

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Rutger Ockhorst et al 2024 Phys. Educ. 59 045017

For the start of a secondary school level lesson series on quantum computing, we designed a hands-on modeling activity where students construct a model diamond lattice with a nitrogen vacancy (NV) defect. NV centers find application as qubits and sensitive magnetometers. This activity aims to help students visualize the structure of such NV centers within the diamond lattice, making the subject matter more tangible. The activity has proven to be challenging but feasible. It features both collaborative and competitive elements thereby surely creating an energizing buzz in the classroom.

Barbara Rovšek 2024 Phys. Educ. 59 045016

Assigning students the seemingly simple task of drawing the Moon's trajectory in the heliocentric system can ignite a profound discussion about the intricacies of the trajectory. This article presents a diverse set of plots depicting suggested trajectories, alongside a detailed discussion of their differences and the implications of various details. The provided reasoning exemplifies analytical thinking, showcasing how even a small dataset enables us to dismiss certain suggested trajectories (hypotheses).

Stephen Hughes and Mark Young 2024 Phys. Educ. 59 043003

Seeing connections between different areas of physics is a good way to teach physics. In the orbit of a planet, there is a continuous interchange between gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy with the sum being constant. This is essentially the same physics as a mass on the end of a spring, or a pendulum. In this paper, equivalent spring constants are calculated for planetary orbits and the pendulum equation used to derive Kepler's third law.

Fabian Hennig et al 2024 Phys. Educ. 59 045007

This paper describes the design of a new teaching-learning sequence on quantum physics aimed at upper secondary school students. In this teaching-learning sequence, GeoGebra simulations and interactive screen experiments are used to investigate the behaviour of a single photon at beam splitter and single photon interference in a Michelson interferometer. We propose a minimal formalism using Dirac notation, which avoids complex numbers and elaborate vector calculus, to make a quantitative description of the quantum optics experiments accessible to secondary school students. With this new educational pathway, we take into account findings from physics education research, which suggest that the introduction of a mathematical formalism tailored to students' abilities might help them to overcome naive-realist views of quanta or space-time descriptions of quantum phenomena, while at the same time facilitating a transition to a functional understanding of quantum models.

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Physics Education Research

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The Physics Education Research Group at Colorado (PER@C) is one of largest research programs in physics education research (PER) in the nation. Our research group develops and studies: uses of technology in physics education, assessments (conceptual, epistemological, and belief-oriented), theoretical models of students' learning physics, social and contextual foundations of student learning, examination of successful educational reforms and replication studies of such reforms, and student problem solving in physics. We sponsor a number of educational reforms in physics, which range from pre-college to faculty and institutional change. The research group includes faculty, staff, and students from both the Department of Physics and the School of Education.

Featured Project: Remote Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience

Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) involve students in authentic research by engaging students in inquiries where neither the students nor the instructor know the answer. During the Fall 2020 term, when faced with the challenge of instructing a large (400+ student), introductory physics lab virtually, Heather Lewandowski, Alexandra Werth, and Colin West redesigned the course to create a unique experience for the students in this very unique situation--a CURE. They partnered with Dr. James Mason at Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) to study the relationship between the power of solar flares and their frequency. CU Boulder's Physics 1140 students engaged in a 16-week-long course which allowed them to work and contribute to this research project. Students worked in teams of 3-4 students over Zoom to choose a flare from the Space Weather Data Portal, do a background correction, and report the total power of the flare. The students then pulled all the individual flare data together to determine the relationship between flare power and frequency. The project resulted in a publication in the Astrophysical Journal with all students included as authors. Research on the impacts of this CURE is ongoing, but results so far suggest that the course played a crucial role in helping students develop a sense of community and engage in authentic teamwork.

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Physics education research (PER) is an inherently interdisciplinary endeavor that studies how people learn the content and culture of physics. Investigations in PER are diverse and include looking at student learning in the classroom all the way up to the policies that govern the physics community and affect physicist’s careers.

Students of PER move on to many interesting careers, including academia, high school teaching, consulting, university administration, entrepreneurship and more. A research program in PER can be undertaken both at the undergraduate and graduate level at the University of Utah and students are always encouraged to apply.

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Ramón barthelemy.

Ramón Barthelemy is a former Fulbright, U.S. Department of Education AAAS Science Policy Fellow and private sector consultant dedicated to equity and inclusion in physics and astronomy. Dr. Barthelemy’s work has included studying the experiences of women in graduate physics and astronomy, LGBT persistence in the field of physics, and the motivations of students to pursue physics in Finland. Currently he is conducting research here at the University of Utah continuing these efforts with over $1M in funding from the National Science Foundation. He was also the recent recipient of the American Association of Physics Teachers Early Career award and the Fulbright Finland Alumni award.

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Prof. Gerton’s work focuses on sensemaking in various learning environments including introductory physics classrooms and labs and intermediate quantum mechanics courses.  He has supervised PhD students and undergraduates in PER in collaboration with Prof.  Lauren Barth-Cohen  in the Department of Educational Psychology and Prof.  Claudia De Grandi  in Physics and Astronomy.  He also helps lead various faculty and student support programs such as a faculty fellows program for inclusive teaching and mentoring, and the department’s summer undergraduate research programs.

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The Department of Physics & Astronomy at the University of Utah offers a research experience program in physics and astronomy that allows undergraduate students to work closely with a faculty mentor and their research group on an individual project.

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Physics Education Research

Our group researches how students learn and reason in physics, the design of curricular materials and methods to improve and assess learning, and the study of factors affecting performance, retention and the student experience. Though its focus is research and has been successful in obtaining funding, the group also has a significant influence on our instructional programs, and has played a key role in the well-regarded education and diversity program of the CEM, as well as our APS Bridge Program. This group is funded by the NSF and the DoEd. 

A unique strength of the Ohio State physics department is that it is one of the few departments in the nation to have a group of faculty and graduate students dedicated to researching how students learn physics and how to improve their learning. Graduate students have a variety of ways to engage with the Physics Education Research group: performing ground-breaking education research in our PhD program, implementing innovative course design as a teaching assistant and participating in a graduate-level course on issues in physics education, which is recommended for all students who aspire to be college faculty members.

The Physics Education Research group has three main areas of focus: cognitive studies, educational assessment and the development of instructional materials and techniques.

Cognitive studies and educational assessment 

What is the nature of students’ understanding of physics? How does this understanding evolve with time? Why is physics so hard? Does a physics course improve scientific reasoning skills? These are some of the questions investigated by the Physics Education Research group. Research includes: cognitive origins of scientific misconceptions, hierarchical structure of physics knowledge, and student learning in upper level and graduate courses. There is also research in computational models of student understanding and apply these to computer-based learning projects. The building and rigorous analysis of educational assessments, in order to more accurately measure and model student understanding, is also an active area of investigation.

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Applying knowledge of how students learn to the design (and redesign) of instructional materials and techniques is a key focus in the Physics Education Research group. We develop course materials at the undergraduate and graduate level, including several projects on computer-based instruction. We also work with other groups in the department to improve learning of cutting edge topics such as materials science.

Essential Skills is an online learning application developed by Prof. Andrew Heckler’s team in the department’s Physics Education Research group. The application helps over 4000 OSU students per year to practice and become more fluent in basic skills important for physics, such as vector math. It has been funded by the Physics department, OSU, and NSF funds, has resulted in numerous publications documenting dramatic student learning, and the team is looking to expand to increased student interactivity and more physics topics to help a diverse range of students. -Prof. Andrew Heckler

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Physics Education Research at UCF is led by two tenure-track assistant professors. Both Dr. Jackie Chini and Dr. Zhongzhou Chen received their Ph.D.s in physics for research in physics education. We study issues relevant to the evolving landscape of higher education in physics and collaborate with colleagues in related disciplines.

Dr. Jackie Chini’s group examines how to adapt active learning strategies for diverse student populations and institutional contexts. She has received funding through the NSF-WIDER program to study diverse implementations of SCALE-UP across the country and through the NSF-IUSE program to study the efficacy of popular active learning strategies for students with executive function disorders, common among students with ADHD, learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorder and student veterans.

Dr. Zhongzhou Chen is interested in combining online education technology with learning science to shape the future of STEM education. Collaborating with the Center for Distributed Learning at UCF (online.ucf.edu), he designs and develops online learning modules based on the concept of deliberate practice. He is also interested in measuring and modeling th e fundamental cognitive process behind physics problem solving.

Many other faculty, including both tenure-line faculty and lecturers, work on physics education research projects and have interest in improving physics education.

• Dr. Ahlam Al-Rawi formed the Physics Education Research by Lecturers (PERL) group at UCF. Lecturers at UCF teach many of our large courses, so they are able to collect data from large samples. The members of PERL have PhDs in physics for research in a variety of disciplines, which enables them to connect with a wide array of student interests and difficulties. Dr. Al-Rawi is also interested in implementing and creating curriculum for student-centered learning and leads the department’s Outreach Committee and Student Life Committees. Her interests lie in using interdisciplinary thinking to attract more students to science and in supporting integration of all students in departmental research opportunities.
• Dr. Jeffrey Bindell was one of the leaders of the revival of SCALE-UP/studio-mode instruction in introductory physics at UCF. He is interested in assessing student learning across very different instructional strategies, such as comparing lecture-based and project-based introductory courses.
• Dr. Enrique Del Barco was an iSTEM Faculty Fellow in 2015-2016. He has recently led the creation of a service-learning nanoscience minor, a physics summer camp (PHySICOS), and a Physical Science capstone research program for undergraduates. His educational activities focus on increasing enrollment, reducing attrition and facilitating transition into the profession in STEM fields.
• Dr. Archana Dubey was part of the team that reinvigorated SCALE-UP/studio physics at UCF. She is interested in improving student learning in introductory and modern physics. She has presented talks and posters about scaffolding students’ problem solving with multi-part problems in Physics II.
• Costas Efthimiou was a co-PI on UCF’s ICUBED (Innovations through Institutional Integration) NSF-funded project.
• Dr. Elena Flitsiyan is interested in incorporating service-learning in the physics curriculum and using technology to enhance learning. In first semester calculus-based physics, her students completed the service-learning project “Physics of the Car Accident: Building a Safe Campus by Solving Physics Problems”.
• Dr. Talat Rahman was awarded an American Physical Society (APS) Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC) grant to improve physics teacher recruitment and education.
• Dr. Christos Velisarris is a member of PERL. His general education science course “Physics in Films” uses scenes from movies to motivate students to learn about physical science

A Guide to Open Educational Resources for Physics

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Open Textbooks

• B.C. Open Collection -- Physics Textbooks The B.C. Open Collection is a curated selection of open educational resources (OER) that can be accessed by educators in B.C. and beyond to use in the classroom, in an institutional learning management system, or on other teaching and learning platforms. All materials are openly licensed. This means they are free to use, customize, and share.
• Intech -- Physics Textbooks Intech are on a journey to democratize knowledge. The Open Access paradigm is the only model which allows that. Content is accessible for free, on all electronic devices - no matter where it is downloaded and read, from Burkina Faso, to Romania or in Silicon Valley. Providing freely available, accessible dynamic academic content.
• MITOpenCourseWare -- Physics Textbooks and Readings Since 2001, MIT OpenCourseWare has been creating new opportunities for millions of learners and educators, sharing Open Educational Resources (OER) from MIT and helping to lead a global revolution in free access to knowledge.
• National Academies -- Physics Textbooks The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are the nation's pre-eminent source of high-quality, objective advice on science, engineering, and health matters.
• OERCommons -- Physics Textbooks OER Commons offers a comprehensive infrastructure for curriculum experts and instructors at all levels to identify high-quality OER and collaborate around their adaptation, evaluation, and use to address the needs of teachers and learners.
• Open Textbook Library -- Physics Results Open textbooks are licensed by authors and publishers to be freely used and adapted. Download, edit and distribute them at no cost.
• OpenStax -- Physics Textbooks Openstax publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks that are absolutely free online and low cost in print.
• Springer -- Physics Textbooks As part of Springer Nature, SpringerLink delivers fast access to the depth and breadth of our online collection of journals, eBooks, reference works and protocols across a vast range of subject disciplines.

Open Curricular Resources

• B.C. Open Collection -- Physics Course Materials The B.C. Open Collection is a curated selection of open educational resources (OER) that can be accessed by educators in B.C. and beyond to use in the classroom, in an institutional learning management system, or on other teaching and learning platforms. All materials are openly licensed. This means they are free to use, customize, and share.
• Course Era -- Physics Results Coursera is the global online learning platform that offers anyone, anywhere access to online courses and degrees from world-class universities and companies.
• EdX -- Physics Courses EdX is the online learning platform from world-leading digital education company 2U, Inc. EdX was founded by Harvard and MIT as an experiment to make the world’s best education available to everyone.
• Merlot -- Physics Results The MERLOT system provides access to curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools, led by an international community of educators, learners and researchers.
• MITOpenCourseWare -- Physics Course Materials Since 2001, MIT OpenCourseWare has been creating new opportunities for millions of learners and educators, sharing Open Educational Resources (OER) from MIT and helping to lead a global revolution in free access to knowledge.
• MITOpenCourseWare -- Physics Course Packs Since 2001, MIT OpenCourseWare has been creating new opportunities for millions of learners and educators, sharing Open Educational Resources (OER) from MIT and helping to lead a global revolution in free access to knowledge.
• OERCommons -- Physics Course Materials OER Commons offers a comprehensive infrastructure for curriculum experts and instructors at all levels to identify high-quality OER and collaborate around their adaptation, evaluation, and use to address the needs of teachers and learners.
• OpenLearn -- Physics Resources The Open University has a radical and pioneering approach to access. Matching a refusal to place qualifications barriers in front of our own students, we also have a commitment to release and promote free learning content for others, for the benefit of the wider community. OpenLearn is a trailblazer for the provision of high quality open educational resources (OER) at scale and breadth, for free and accessible to all.
• Saylor Academy -- Physics Saylor offers full courses online. Their texts and content may be useful in your own courses. This page showcases Saylor's Physics courses.
• Last Updated: May 29, 2024 12:13 AM
• URL: https://libraryguides.nau.edu/c.php?g=1384940

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• Small Class Sizes
• Professional Development
• Induction Support (B.T.S.A)

A teacher's primary role and purpose are to provide students with appropriate educational activities and experiences that will enable them to fulfill their potential for intellectual, emotional, physical, and social growth. Teachers will help students develop the skills necessary to be productive members of society.

Instructional Strategies

• Design, write and use lesson plans that conform to the charter’s curriculum. Ensure written plans are available for review. The dean of academics will review all lesson plans
• Ensure lesson plans show modifications for differences in student learning styles
• Teach instructional subjects according to guidelines established by California Department of Education, charter policies, and administrative regulations
• Implement appropriate instructional and learning strategies, activities, materials, and equipment to ensure comprehension of learning styles and student needs
• Design instructional activities by using data from student learning style assessments
• Collaborate with special education teachers on student Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) to ensure all modifications are met
• Collaborate with staff to determine charter requirements for the instructional goals, objectives, and methods.
• Produce and oversee teacher aide and volunteer assignments

Growth and Development

• Help students assess and enhance their study methods and habits
• Produce formal and informal testing to evaluate student success
• Coordinate and manage extracurricular duties as assigned
• Sponsor outside activities approved by the charter principal

Classroom Management and Organization

• Prepare classroom to enhance learning and to aid in the physical, social, and emotional development of students
• Control student behavior in agreement with the student handbook
• Ensure necessary and reasonable measures are taken to protect students, equipment, materials, and facilities

Communication

• Establish communication rapport with parents, students, principals, and teachers through conferences.
• Create and maintain a professional relationship with colleagues, students, parents, and community members.
• Enrich job skills through professional development activities
• Keep up to date on and abide by state and charter regulations and policies for classroom teachers
• Gather, manage and file all reports, records, and other documents required
• Be active in faculty meetings and assist in staff committees as necessary

$61000 - $85000 / year

Qualifications

• BA or BS (as appropriate) degree in subject matter
• California Commission on Teacher Credentialing credential, certificate, permit, or other documentation equivalent to what a teacher in other public schools would be required to hold
• Highly qualified in core courses as defined in the section titled NCLB and Credentialing Requirements
• Understanding of subjects assigned
• Knowledge of curriculum and instruction
• The capability of instructing students and managing their behavior
• Exceptional organizational, communication, and interpersonal skills

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Physical Review Physics Education Research

• Collections
• Editorial Team

Volume 18, Issue 1

January - june 2022, editorials and announcements, editorial: research on advancing equity is critical for physics, charles henderson and michael thoennessen, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010001 (2022) – published 11 april 2022, highlighted articles, featured in physics editors' suggestion, lgbt + physicists: harassment, persistence, and uneven support, ramón s. barthelemy, madison swirtz, savannah garmon, elizabeth h. simmons, kyle reeves, michael l. falk, wouter deconinck, elena a. long, and timothy j. atherton, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010124 (2022) – published 28 march 2022, viewpoint: making physics inclusive to lgbtq+ folks.

LGBT+ members of the physics community who have negative perceptions of workplace climate and who observe exclusionary behavior are more likely to consider leaving the discipline.

Show Abstract

Featured in physics, not feeling recognized as a physics person by instructors and teaching assistants is correlated with female students’ lower grades, sonja cwik and chandralekha singh, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010138 (2022) – published 31 may 2022, : keeping women in physics is more than a numbers game.

Women in introductory physics are less likely than men to think that others perceive them as being a physics person.

Students’ sense of belonging in introductory physics course for bioscience majors predicts their grade

Phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010139 (2022) – published 31 may 2022.

In introductory physics courses where men outnumber women, mens’ sense of belonging increases while womens’ does not.

Editors' Suggestion

Impact of virtual research experience for undergraduates experiences on students’ psychosocial gains during the covid-19 pandemic, dina zohrabi alaee, micah k. campbell, and benjamin m. zwickl, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010101 (2022) – published 4 january 2022.

Remote research experience for undergraduates programs should be considered as a means to expand access to research experiences for students.

Evaluating the role of student preference in physics lab group equity

N. g. holmes, grace heath, katelynn hubenig, sophia jeon, z. yasemin kalender, emily stump, and eleanor c. sayre, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010106 (2022) – published 20 january 2022.

Inequities in student lab group experiences are due to structural aspects of the learning environment; instructors must institute policies and practices to push against gender norms and stereotypes.

Cross-disciplinary learning index: A quantitative measure of cross-disciplinary learning about energy

Todd haskell, emily borda, and andrew boudreaux, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010108 (2022) – published 24 january 2022.

The development and validation of techniques to measure cross-disciplinary learning: an example in the context of energy.

Increased learning in a college physics course with timely use of short multimedia summaries

Spencer dunleavy, greg kestin, kristina callaghan, logan mccarty, and louis deslauriers, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010110 (2022) – published 28 january 2022.

Carefully designed one-minute videos and short text summaries following a lecture can significantly increase students’ understanding of the material and their ability to organize the material into useful mental frameworks.

Skills-focused lab instruction improves critical thinking skills and experimentation views for all students

Cole walsh, h. j. lewandowski, and n. g. holmes, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010128 (2022) – published 11 april 2022.

Labs focused on skills improve critical thinking skills and experimentation views for all students compared with labs focused on reinforcing lecture concepts.

Identifying students’ mental models of the apparent motion of the Sun and stars

Hans bekaert, hans van winckel, wim van dooren, an steegen, and mieke de cock, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010130 (2022) – published 20 april 2022.

There are five different mental models that students use to reason about the apparent motion of the Sun and stars.

Examining the effects of lab instruction and gender composition on intergroup interaction networks in introductory physics labs

Meagan sundstrom, david g. wu, cole walsh, ashley b. heim, and n. g. holmes, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010102 (2022) – published 4 january 2022.

In introductory physics labs, direct prompts from the lab instructor to interact with other groups leads to more and longer interactions.

Development and validation of the Conceptual Survey on Wave Optics

Karolina matejak cvenic, maja planinic, ana susac, lana ivanjek, katarina jelicic, and martin hopf, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010103 (2022) – published 10 january 2022.

The conceptual survey on wave optics is a valid and reliable 26-item multiple-choice instrument suitable for use as a post-test for high school students.

Investigating unprompted and prompted diagrams generated by physics majors during problem solving

Michael vignal and bethany r. wilcox, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010104 (2022) – published 12 january 2022.

On some types of problems many students can select the correct answer without drawing a diagram; on other types of problems many student who drew diagrams were unable to select the correct answer.

Working together or alone, near, or far: Social connections and communities of practice in in-person and remote physics laboratories

Drew j. rosen and angela m. kelly, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010105 (2022) – published 12 january 2022.

Students in remote undergraduate physics labs form weak communities of practice with one another, and their instructors exist outside of this community structure.

Examining the relationship between informal science experiences and physics identity: Unrealized possibilities

Zahra hazari, remy dou, gerhard sonnert, and philip m. sadler, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010107 (2022) – published 20 january 2022.

Informal learning experiences in physics reinforce stereotypical practices, fail to intersect in positive ways with the biological sciences, and continue to be less accessible to students from historically marginalized groups.

Assessing the impact of metacognitive postreflection exercises on problem-solving skillfulness

Aaron reinhard, alex felleson, paula c. turner, and maxwell green, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010109 (2022) – published 24 january 2022.

The efficacy of metacognitive reflections on recently completed work to improve retention of newly learned problem-solving techniques may be highly context dependent.

Defining and assessing understandings of evidence with the assessment rubric for physics inquiry: Towards integration of argumentation and inquiry

C. f. j. pols, p. j. j. m. dekkers, and m. j. de vries, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010111 (2022) – published 15 february 2022.

An approach to assessing the presence and application of inquiry knowledge required for engaging in physics based on an observation of actions and decisions.

Improving test security and efficiency of computerized adaptive testing for the Force Concept Inventory

Jun-ichiro yasuda, michael m. hull, and naohiro mae, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010112 (2022) – published 17 february 2022.

The accuracy and precision of the full-length Force Concept Inventory can be achieved with fewer items via computerized adaptive testing.

Characterizing active learning environments in physics using latent profile analysis

Kelley commeford, eric brewe, and adrienne traxler, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010113 (2022) – published 23 february 2022.

Characterizing active learning environments at fine grained level allows for an understanding of the distinguishing characteristics of pedagogies in physics.

Participation, performance, and outcomes in an undergraduate physics degree: Perspectives on gender and socioeconomic factors

Rachel e. harrington, job h. j. thijssen, and judy hardy, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010114 (2022) – published 23 february 2022.

Institutional contexts are different and to support equitable practices and outcomes each institution collects and make decisions based on appropriate data about the academic performance and experience of their students.

Theoretical model and quantitative assessment of scientific thinking and reasoning

Lei bao, kathleen koenig, yang xiao, joseph fritchman, shaona zhou, and cheng chen, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010115 (2022) – published 23 february 2022.

A new instrument to assess scientific reasoning built from a modeling framework that integrates research in scientific and causal reasoning.

Framework for unpacking students’ mindsets in physics by gender

Z. yasemin kalender, emily marshman, christian d. schunn, timothy j. nokes-malach, and chandralekha singh, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010116 (2022) – published 28 february 2022.

Female physics students are more likely than male physics students to believe that innate talent is needed to excel in physics, and that they may not have that talent.

Development and validation of an astronomy self-efficacy instrument for understanding and doing

Rachel freed, david mckinnon, michael fitzgerald, and christina m. norris, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010117 (2022) – published 28 february 2022.

It is important to development domain-specific self-efficacy instruments as a way to assess and improve instruction with an example from astronomy.

Observing whiteness in introductory physics: A case study

Amy d. robertson and w. tali hairston, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010119 (2022) – published 11 march 2022.

Whiteness shapes many practices in physics classrooms that are often thought to be neutral.

Impact of introductory physics for the life sciences in a senior biology capstone course

Benjamin d. geller, jack rubien, sara m. hiebert, and catherine h. crouch, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010120 (2022) – published 11 march 2022.

Biology majors who take the introductory physics for life sciences course are more likely to reason quantitatively and mechanistically about diffusive phenomena and to successfully coordinate between multiple representations of diffusive processes.

Instructor interactions in traditional and nontraditional labs

David g. wu, ashley b. heim, meagan sundstrom, cole walsh, and n. g. holmes, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010121 (2022) – published 14 march 2022.

The amount of interaction between instructors and students during lab is more a product of the instructional design than an individual instructor’s implementation of that design.

Designing and implementing materials on quantum computing for secondary school students: The case of teleportation

Sara satanassi, elisa ercolessi, and olivia levrini, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010122 (2022) – published 14 march 2022.

Designing an inclusive and productive learning environment for the teaching of quantum computing in secondary schools.

History of science based dialogues on sound waves: From sound atoms to phonons

Alexander volfson, haim eshach, and yuval ben-abu, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010123 (2022) – published 18 march 2022.

An instructional technique that makes use of whole class discussions based on the history of science.

What decisions do experts make when doing back-of-the-envelope calculations?

Gabriel murillo-gonzalez and eric w. burkholder, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010125 (2022) – published 5 april 2022.

Solving back-of-the-envelope problems does not require different skills than solving other kinds of problems that physicists encounter in their research.

Measuring the level of homework answer copying during COVID-19 induced remote instruction

Zhongzhou chen, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010126 (2022) – published 5 april 2022.

Most students do not engage in answer copying behaviors to complete online homework assignments in introductory calculus-based physics.

Learning entropy among peers through the lens of coordination class theory

Juan velasco, laura buteler, carlos briozzo, and enrique coleoni, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010127 (2022) – published 7 april 2022.

Using coordination class theory to observe learning at both the individual and the group level.

Impacts on student learning, confidence, and affect in a remote, large-enrollment, course-based undergraduate research experience in physics

Alexandra werth, colin g. west, and h. j. lewandowski, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010129 (2022) – published 13 april 2022.

Implementation and assessment of a large-scale, introductory, online physics course-based undergraduate research experience.

Assessing the impact of introductory physics for the life sciences on students’ ability to build complex models

Benjamin d. geller, maya tipton, brandon daniel-morales, nikhil tignor, calvin white, and catherine h. crouch, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010131 (2022) – published 20 april 2022.

Introductory physics for the life sciences students are more successfully than students in a typical physics course at combining multiple ideas to solve problems in new contexts.

Evaluation of high school student responses to the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey

Julian s. martins and william e. lindsay, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010132 (2022) – published 25 april 2022.

Developing an attitudes and beliefs survey structure for K-12 physics courses aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards.

Motivations for using the item response theory nominal response model to rank responses to multiple-choice items

Trevor i. smith and nasrine bendjilali, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010133 (2022) – published 25 april 2022.

New insights on multiple-choice assessments based on similarities between the item response theory nominal response model and the probability function of the canonical ensemble with degenerate energy states.

Detecting preservice teachers’ visual attention under prediction and nonprediction conditions with eye-tracking technology

Qiuye li, shaorui xu, yilin chen, chuting lu, and shaona zhou, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010134 (2022) – published 27 april 2022.

In an eye-tracking study, preservice teachers who correctly predicted student responses paid attention to different areas than those teachers who did not correctly predict student responses.

Investigating students’ views of experimental physics in German laboratory classes

E. teichmann, h. j. lewandowski, and m. alemani, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010135 (2022) – published 27 april 2022.

A German language version of the E-CLASS instrument is available for understanding students views of experimental physics.

Problem solving in basic physics: Effective self-explanations based on four elements with support from retrieval practice

Vegard gjerde, vegard havre paulsen, bodil holst, and stein dankert kolstø, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010136 (2022) – published 2 may 2022.

Retrieval practice of physics principles and their conditions of application before self-explanation can have a positive effect on posttest problem-solving scores and can increase the quality of students’ self-explanations.

High school students’ perceptions on the relevance of inquiry-oriented instructional labs as introduction to an extended research project

David perl-nussbaum and edit yerushalmi, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010137 (2022) – published 25 may 2022.

Investigating high school student perceptions of the value of different inquiry practices in a learning progression and interpreting these finding using the lens of boundary crossing.

Difficulties in understanding mechanical waves: Remediated by problem-based instruction

Stella teddy kanyesigye, jean uwamahoro, and imelda kemeza, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010140 (2022) – published 2 june 2022.

Implementation of problem based learning in secondary schools in Western Uganda improves student understanding of mechanical waves.

Classification of open-ended responses to a research-based assessment using natural language processing

Joseph wilson, benjamin pollard, john m. aiken, marcos d. caballero, and h. j. lewandowski, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010141 (2022) – published 2 june 2022.

A natural language processing model can be trained to categorize open-ended responses to the physics measurement questionnaire as well as a pair of human coders.

Do female and male students’ physics motivational beliefs change in a two-semester introductory physics course sequence?

Yangqiuting li and chandralekha singh, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010142 (2022) – published 3 june 2022.

The current learning environment in traditionally taught introductory physics courses does not improve students’ physics motivational beliefs, and initial gender differences in these beliefs becomes larger.

Mediating role of personality in the relation of gender to self-efficacy in physics and mathematics

Rachel henderson, dona hewagallage, jake follmer, lynnette michaluk, jessica deshler, edgar fuller, and john stewart, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010143 (2022) – published 3 june 2022.

A substantial amount of the often-reported differences in self-efficacy between men and women may result from gender differences in the tendency to experience anxiety and the tendency to conscientiously complete tasks.

Exploring student ideas on change of basis in quantum mechanics

Giaco corsiglia, benjamin p. schermerhorn, homeyra sadaghiani, armando villaseñor, steven pollock, and gina passante, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010144 (2022) – published 6 june 2022.

Quantum mechanics students grapple with basis and change of basis in a variety of ways.

From Cartesian coordinates to Hilbert space: Supporting student understanding of basis in quantum mechanics

Benjamin p. schermerhorn, giaco corsiglia, homeyra sadaghiani, gina passante, and steven pollock, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010145 (2022) – published 8 june 2022.

The iteratively designed tutorial effectively helps students make sense of and carry out a change of basis in quantum mechanics by drawing an analogy between quantum state vectors and 2D Cartesian vectors.

Long-term collaboration with strong friendship ties improves academic performance in remote and hybrid teaching modalities in high school physics

Javier pulgar, diego ramírez, abigail umanzor, cristian candia, and iván sánchez, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010146 (2022) – published 13 june 2022.

Strong peer-to-peer collaborations in a physics class require time to develop and can result in higher grades.

Workplace climate for LGBT + physicists: A view from students and professional physicists

Ramón s. barthelemy, bryce e. hughes, madison swirtz, matthew mikota, and timothy j. atherton, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010147 (2022) – published 13 june 2022.

Actively cultivating an LGBT-inclusive work environment may have a more profound impact on retaining LGBT physicists than only removing exclusive behaviors and practices.

Harnessing active engagement in educational videos: Enhanced visuals and embedded questions

Greg kestin and kelly miller, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010148 (2022) – published 21 june 2022.

Instructonal physics videos are most effective when they include enhanced visuals and embedded questions.

Examining the relation of high school preparation and college achievement to conceptual understanding

Dona hewagallage, elaine christman, and john stewart, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010149 (2022) – published 28 june 2022.

Gender differences observed in pretest and post-test scores were changed little by controlling for either high school preparation or noncognitive factors.

Today’s interdisciplinary quantum information classroom: Themes from a survey of quantum information science instructors

Josephine c. meyer, gina passante, steven j. pollock, and bethany r. wilcox, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 010150 (2022) – published 30 june 2022.

There is not a canonical approach to introduction to quantum information science courses.

REVIEW ARTICLES

Critical race and feminist standpoint theories in physics education research: a historical review and potential applications, miguel rodriguez, ramón barthelemy, and melinda mccormick, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 013101 (2022) – published 25 february 2022.

A review and critique of critical race theory and feminist standpoint theory while providing guidance for using these theories in physics education research.

Eye tracking in physics education research: A systematic literature review

L. hahn and p. klein, phys. rev. phys. educ. res. 18 , 013102 (2022) – published 2 march 2022.

The use of eye tracking in physics education research is growing rapidly and has led to insights into students’ learning processes.

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Nanoscale Physics and Quantum Devices Lab at Brown University

Liam Mitchell receives physics department’s Award of Excellence as a Graduate Teaching Assistant

Congratulations to Liam Mitchell for being awarded the Physics Department’s Award of Excellence as a Graduate Teaching Assistant. This recognition highlights his exceptional dedication and contributions as a Teaching Assistant.

Liam’s commitment to his role as a TA is truly commendable. He consistently demonstrated thorough preparation for his workshop sessions and office hours, ensuring that he was always ready to assist students effectively. The feedback from students has been overwhelmingly positive, reflecting Liam’s impact on their learning journey. His ability to clarify complex concepts and provide support has been greatly appreciated.

Liam is one of the two graduate TAs who received this award this year, underscoring his outstanding performance and dedication. Congratulations, Liam, on this well-deserved honor!

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2024 Faculty of Science Excellence Award winners announced

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Michelle Maillet (Academic Associate), Lauren Kay (Clerical), Chantal Marotte (Management), and Moshe Dalva (Technical) have been named recipients of the Faculty of Science Excellence Awards.  

These awards, announced at the Faculty of Science Council meeting on May 21st, recognize the outstanding contributions made by members of the Faculty’s administrative and support staff during the 2023-2024 academic year.  

Read below the citations prepared by the Faculty of Science Excellence Awards Committee. 

Michelle Maillet, Department of Geography, Faculty of Science Excellence Award for Academic Associates  

As Undergraduate Advisor, Michelle Maillet has been responsible since 2014 for guiding students through their programs in the Department of Geography. Her job expanded in 2019 when she became full-time advisor for the Interfaculty program in Sustainability Science and Society. As a steadfast supporter of students’ interests, Michelle consistently goes the extra mile to provide students with outstanding support. One of many examples of this is her organization of extra mid-semester activities centered around arts and crafts that enable students to connect, socialize, and let off steam. She has a university-wide reputation as an exceptionally caring undergraduate advisor, to the point where many students name their interactions with her as their favourite part of being a Geography student.  For all these reasons and many more, I am very happy to present the Faculty of Science Excellence Award for Academic Associates to Michelle Maillet. 

Lauren Kay, Department of Physics, Faculty of Science Excellence Award for Clerical Staff  

Since 2010, Lauren Kay has served the Department of Physics with great distinction as the Graduate Program Coordinator. This is a huge responsibility, as Physics has about 200 graduate students, many of whom are international, with around 80 new entrants to be selected and around 80 who complete their programs each year. Lauren has made exceptional efforts to ensure that students progress through their thesis work smoothly, from streamlining procedures for paying them to constituting their thesis committees and coordinating their final defenses. She handles changing or exceptional circumstances, such as students having sudden visa problems, with considerable skill and good grace.   For all these reasons and many more, I am very happy to present the Faculty of Science Excellence Award for Clerical staff to Lauren Kay. 

Chantal Marotte, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science Excellence Award for Management Staff   

Chantal Marotte has been with the Department of Chemistry for 38 years and has been managing the graduate program in Chemistry since 2003. She handles a range of activities, including filling TA positions, assessing graduate applications, and, perhaps most importantly, ensuring the well-being of graduate students with exceptional dedication and skill. At one point, she intervened extensively to find financial support for a student who experienced substantial loss because of a fire in their residence building. How much Chantal has touched the hearts of Chemistry students was made evident by a compilation of video testimonials that students and alumni made in 2021 to thank her for her efforts.  For all these reasons and many more, I am very happy to present the Faculty of Science Excellence Award for Management staff to Chantal Marotte. 

Moshe (Mike) Dalva, Department of Geography, Faculty of Science Excellence Award for Technical Staff   

Moshe (Mike) Dalva has been a Research Technician in the Department of Geography since 2004 and is also an MSc graduate from the same department. He couples exceptional understanding of the theory behind the intricate, complex, and sometimes old, pieces of equipment in Burnside Hall with remarkable technical skill in operating and fixing them. In one instance where an equipment failure appeared to be terminal, Mike was able to diagnose and begin fixing the problem within an hour, potentially saving the student who relied on this equipment many months of delay. He is deeply dedicated to ensuring that researchers conduct their work safely, not just in a laboratory setting but also in remote field locations, where he also provides essential support.   For all these reasons and many more, I am very happy to present the Faculty of Science Excellence Award for Technical staff to Moshe Dalva. 

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The Therapeutic Value of Clowning Around

Victoria talwar, ecp and interim dean, interviewed for adult/children screen time on ctv news, faculty of education's kevin ah-sen and r. nanre nafziger presented with equity and community building awards, science fair fun in kahnawà:ke.

Come Garden on Thursdays in the Education Community Garden

Badriah basma: oral defence ecp, coding ateliers: r, python, matlab, stata, sas, faculty of education convocation – spring 2024 ceremony, coding ateliers: r, python, matlab, c++, department and university information, science and mathematics education research group (smerg).

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