Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in using virtual reality (VR) technology to benefit instruction, especially in physics and related subjects. As VR devices improve and become more widely available, there remains a number of unanswered questions regarding the impact of VR on student learning and how best to use this technology in the classroom. On the topic of electrostatics, for example, a large, controlled, randomized study performed by Smith et al. [A controlled study of stereoscopic virtual reality in freshman electrostatics, Proceedings of the 2017 Physics Education Research Conference, Cincinnati, OH, PER Conference series (2017), pp. 376–379], found that VR-based instruction had an overall negligible impact on student learning compared to videos or images. However, they did find a strong trend for students who reported frequent video game play to learn better from VR than other media. One possible interpretation of this result is that extended videogame play provides a kind of “training” that enables a student to learn more comfortably in the virtual environment. In the present work we consider if a VR training activity that is unrelated to electrostatics can help prepare students to learn electrostatics from subsequent VR instruction. We find that preliminary VR training leads to a small but statistically significant improvement in student performance on our electrostatics assessment. We also find that student reported game play is still correlated with higher scores on this metric.

Is physics education research based on a representative sample of students? To answer this question we skimmed physics education research papers from three journals for the years 1970–2015 looking for the number of research subjects, the course the subjects were enrolled in, and the institution where the research was conducted. We combined this data with demographics data about these institutions to compile a profile of physics education research subjects, and compared the demographics of this population to those of all students taking physics in the United States. Our results suggest that physics education research subjects, as a whole, are better prepared mathematically and are from a narrow and unrepresentative subset of our intended target physics student populations. For this reason, findings from research may not be as generalizable to all student populations as we have previously assumed.

For several decades, scholars have studied the role of cooperation and its outcomes in educational contexts. Yet we lack a complete understanding of how different instructional strategies impact the relationship between cooperation and learning. In this paper we present results from a field experiment with 82 first-year students in an introductory physics course showing how different instructional strategies led to different social configurations in the classroom and to differences in individual academic performance. Surprisingly, we found that students who actively sought out information from multiple peers were less likely to perform well on well-structured problems as compared to those who did not seek help, whereas, for ill-structured (real-world-like) problems, this effect depended on the features of the learning environment. We observed that good performance on ill- and well-structured problems was sensitive to different social network configurations. In a highly clustered network (which contains redundant information), students performed better on well-structured problems than ill-structured problems. By contrast, students with access to network structural holes (which enable access to more diverse information) performed ill-structured problems better than well-structured problems. Finally, ill-structured problems promoted creative thinking, provided that instructors guided the problem-solving process and motivated students to engage in the appropriate cognitive demands these problems entailed. Our results suggest that teaching and instructional strategies play an important role in cooperative learning; therefore, educators implementing cooperative learning methods have to accompany them with adequate instructional strategy.

Instructional labs are being transformed to better reflect authentic scientific practice, often by removing aspects of pedagogical structure to support student agency and decision making. We explored how these changes impact men’s and women’s participation in group work associated with labs through clustering methods on the quantified behavior of students. We compared the group roles students take on in two different types of instructional settings: (i) highly structured traditional labs, and (ii) less structured inquiry-based labs. Students working in groups in the inquiry-based (less structured) labs assumed different roles within their groups, however men and women systematically took on different roles and men behaved differently when in single- versus mixed-gender groups. We found no such systematic differences in role division among male and female students in the traditional (highly structured) labs. Students in the inquiry-based labs were not overtly assigned these roles, indicating that the inequitable division of roles was not a result of explicit assignment. Our results highlight the importance of structuring equitable group dynamics in educational settings, as a gendered division of roles can emerge without active intervention. As the culture in physics evolves to remove systematic gender biases in the field, instructors in educational settings must not only remove explicitly biased aspects of curricula but also take active steps to ensure that potentially discriminatory aspects are not inadvertently reinforced.

The topic of women in graduate education has been central to many calls for action in increasing diversity and inclusion in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The field of physics has been particularly resistant to change in the significant overrepresentation of men, while also being similar to the field of astronomy which has a higher overall representation of women than many other physical sciences. Little research has been done in the field of astronomy to better understand how women can be supported in other physical sciences. This paper presents an analysis of five women students in a U.S. astronomy graduate program. The results indicate the women in this study relied on student-student collaboration to succeed through their coursework and exams, while faculty and post-doctorate support were critical for their research perseverance. Furthermore, the career goals of these successful students indicate the importance of considering multiple life goals in determining a student’s pathway, and potentially suggests that the way faculty careers progress needs to be reconsidered if the field wants more diverse faculty and role models.

Many instructional physics labs are shifting to teach experimentation skills, rather than to demonstrate or confirm canonical physics phenomena. Our previous work found that many students engage in questionable research practices in attempts to confirm the canonical physics phenomena, even when confirmation is explicitly not the goal of the lab. This exploratory study aimed to answer three research questions: (RQ1) What are students’ expectations about the purpose of labs when they enter introductory physics?, (RQ2) How do their prior experiences shape those expectations?, (RQ3) In what ways do those expectations relate to their engagement in questionable research practices? Through open-response surveys, we found that students overwhelmingly expressed confirmatory beliefs about the purpose of labs. Through interviews, we found that students’ prior lab experiences were also overwhelmingly confirmatory, despite varying degrees of structure. We then used video of individual groups to explore the ways in which questionable research practices manifest through confirmatory expectations. We confirm previous work that students’ confirmatory expectations can lead them to engage in questionable research practices, but find that these behaviors occur despite instructional messaging about an alternative purpose. Our analyses also suggest that engagement in questionable research practices is more frequent than the previous results indicated through analysis of submitted lab notes. These results further illuminate issues with traditional labs, but suggest that the confirmatory goals, perhaps more so than high structure, are problematic.

Scientific expertise is manifested through extensive cycles of making and acting on decisions. To learn the processes and practices of science, therefore, students must have practice with scientific decision making. We argue that this can only happen if students are afforded agency: the opportunity to make decisions to pursue a goal. In this study, we compared two different introductory physics labs through the lens of structuring and supporting student agency. We explore both the role of decision making agency (students are afforded opportunities to make decisions about their lab investigations) and epistemic agency (students are afforded opportunities to generate knowledge). We found that the two labs differed in both the amount and type of structure provided to students: one lab (the intervention condition), with more overall structure, cued student decision making; the other lab (control condition), with less overall structure, made decisions for students. Students in the intervention condition documented, on average, ten times more decisions during their investigations, including more unprompted decisions. In contrast, in labs with less available epistemic agency (i.e., labs where they had to verify or demonstrate canonical models or constants), students in the intervention condition documented fewer decisions than in labs with more available epistemic agency. We associate the improved decision making with students taking up personal agency, based on significant shifts in students’ tone as they described their experimental methods (from passive, third-person narratives to active, first-person narratives). Students in the intervention condition also made higher-quality decisions in line with scientific practice. The study speaks to the important nuances between structure and agency in instructional labs and tests the generalizability of previous research on lab instruction to a two-year college population.

The topic of atomic spectra is part of university and secondary school curricula around the world. Relatively little research, however, has been done on the learning and teaching of this subject, despite the fact that it forms a foundation for advanced study in quantum mechanics, astronomy, and astrophysics. A systematic investigation into student understanding of the formation and structure of atomic spectra was conducted among more than 1000 science majors in physics courses at the University of Zagreb, Croatia and the University of Washington, USA. The research had two primary goals: (i) to probe the extent to which university students are able to relate the wavelength of spectral lines to the transition of electrons between energy levels in an atom, and (ii) to probe the extent to which students recognize the conditions under which discrete line spectra are (and are not) formed. This paper focuses on the latter aspect, in particular, student understanding of the experimental setup that is commonly used to illustrate the formation of discrete line spectra. Students were asked about how changes to a setup consisting of a light source, a mask with a slit, a prism (or diffraction grating), and a screen affect the spectra observed. The findings suggest that relatively few students recognize that the type of light source is critical for the formation of line spectra. Instead students often attribute the formation of line spectra to the slit, the prism (or diffraction grating), or even to the distance between the prism and screen.

Computation is becoming an increasingly important part of physics education. However, there are currently few theories of learning that can be used to help explain and predict the unique challenges and affordances associated with computation in physics. In this study, we adapt the existing theory of computational literacy, which posits that computational learning can be divided into material, cognitive, and social aspects, to the context of undergraduate physics. Based on an exploratory study of undergraduate physics computational literacy, using a newly developed teaching tool known as a computational essay, we have identified a variety of student practices, knowledge, and beliefs across these three aspects of computational literacy. We illustrate these categories with data collected from students who engaged in an initial implementation of computational essays in a 3rd-semester electricity and magnetism class. We conclude by arguing that this framework can be used to theoretically diagnose student difficulties with computation, distinguish educational approaches that focus on material vs cognitive aspects of computational literacy, and highlight the benefits and limitations of open-ended projects like computational essays to student learning.

In quantum mechanics, probability amplitudes are complex numbers and the relative phases between the terms in superposition states have measurable effects. This article describes an investigation into sophomore- and junior-level students’ reasoning patterns in relating relative phases and real-world quantum phenomena. The investigation involved one observational experiment and three testing experiments, during which we formulated and tested three hypotheses that allow us to gain insights into why students have difficulty recognizing the measurable effects of relative phases. We found that, in both $\mathrm{spin}\text{−}1/2$ and infinite square well contexts, many students do not recognize that quantum states differing only by a relative phase are experimentally distinguishable. Moreover, student ability to recognize the measurable effects of relative phase does not improve when given (i) a task that specifically prompts students to compare the probabilities for a particular observable and (ii) a task that does not require taking inner products or changing basis. We also examined the extent to which lacking proficiency with complex numbers may have hindered student understanding of relative phase. The data indicate that most students are proficient with complex numbers. These findings suggest that many students do not, in fact, recognize the purpose of using complex numbers in superposition states. We discuss possible explanations for why students do not seem to recognize this purpose, and we also provide suggestions for future avenues of research.

Much of the literature contributing to physics instructors’ knowledge of student ideas (KSI) reports common patterns of reasoning that are framed as discontinuous with canonical concepts. Our work contributes new KSI about mechanical wave propagation from a resources perspective, framing student thinking in terms of context-sensitive pieces of knowledge that are continuous with canonical physics concepts. The intent of this work is to inform instruction on mechanical waves by identifying and illustrating some of the conceptual resources that instructors might expect their students to use. To support instructor predictions about student thinking, we identify resources that are common across multiple samples and questions. Our data include written responses to three versions of a conceptual question about mechanical pulse propagation. We use an emergent coding scheme to characterize a total of 851 written responses from 6 universities in the United States. Our analysis reveals three common conceptual resources: (i) properties of the medium either impede or facilitate the motion of the pulse, (ii) the speed or duration of transverse motion affects pulse speed, and (iii) the speed of the pulse is affected by its kinetic energy. We show how each of these resources can be viewed as continuous with formal understandings of pulse propagation.

Here we demonstrate the benefits of a new curriculum for introductory calculus-based physics that motivates classical mechanics using a modified version of Hamiltonian mechanics. This curriculum shifts the initial focus of instruction away from forces and the associated vector mathematics, which are known to be problematic for students, to the scalar quantity energy, which is more closely aligned with their previously established intuition, and associated differential and integral calculus. We show that implementation of this calculus-enhanced “energy-first” curriculum resulted in higher normalized gains on the Force Concept Inventory exam for all students and improved performance in downstream engineering courses for students with lower ACT math scores. In other words, the downstream benefits were largest for students with lower math abilities who also pose a larger retention risk. This new curriculum thus has the potential to improve student retention by specifically helping the students who need help the most, including traditionally underserved populations who often have weaker mathematics preparation. We propose future work to investigate whether this new curriculum has lowered the math transference barrier to learning in introductory physics, resulting concomitantly in improvements in student learning of classical mechanics and in student fluency with applied mathematics.

Understanding the ways in which Black folks identify as physicists can provide useful information about the facets of the physics discipline that perpetuate systems of oppression. In prior work, we developed the critical physics identity (CPI) framework to identify the structures and systems that impact the ways that people identify with the physics discipline. In this paper, we apply the CPI to deconstruct the factors that influence physics identity for a sample of undergraduate, graduate, and professional Black physicists. Using the CPI constructs, we classify important internal and external factors that influence how they identify, or not, as a physics person. We find that racialized resources were more influential than physics identity constructs, and document the subcodes of each CPI construct that are discussed most frequently among participants. We note variations between early and later career physicists and between men and women.

We have studied the impact of incoming preparation and demographic variables on student performance on the final exam in the standard introductory calculus-based mechanics course at three different institutions. Multivariable regression analysis was used to examine the extent to which exam scores can be predicted by a variety of variables that are available to most faculty and departments. The results are surprisingly consistent across the institutions, with only math SAT or ACT scores and concept inventory prescores having predictive power. They explain 20%–30% of the variation in student exam performance in all three cases. In all cases, although there appear to be gaps in exam performance if one considers only demographic variables (gender, underrepresented minority, first generation), once these two proxies of incoming preparation are controlled for, there is no longer a demographic gap. There is only a preparation gap that applies equally across the entire student population. This work shows that to properly understand differences in student performance, it is important to do statistical analyses that take multiple variables into account, covering both subject-specific and general preparation. Course designs and teaching better matched to the incoming student preparation will likely eliminate performance gaps across demographic groups, while also improving the success of all students.

A considerable body of research shows that individuals who demonstrate a wide variety of metacognitive skills perform better on scientific problem solving. We developed a way of implementing homework in an undergraduate physics course to promote metacognitive skills. This novel homework design includes both an individual and a team phase and was implemented in a team-based learning environment. We developed a coding table to conduct both qualitative and quantitative analyses of students’ expressions of metacognitive thinking. Results indicate that students’ expressions of metacognitive thinking improved during the term. Data also show that team discussion helps improve metacognitive skills.

Introductory physics lab instruction is undergoing a transformation, with increasing emphasis on developing experimentation and critical thinking skills. These changes present a need for standardized assessment instruments to determine the degree to which students develop these skills through instructional labs. In this article, we present the development and validation of the physics lab inventory of critical thinking (PLIC). We define critical thinking as the ability to use data and evidence to decide what to trust and what to do. The PLIC is a 10-question, closed-response assessment that probes student critical thinking skills in the context of physics experimentation. Using interviews and data from 5584 students at 29 institutions, we demonstrate, through qualitative and quantitative means, the validity and reliability of the instrument at measuring student critical thinking skills. This establishes a valuable new assessment instrument for instructional labs.

Secondary school level quantum physics (QP) courses have recently been implemented in the national curricula of many countries. QP gives opportunities to acquaint students with more recent physics and its applications and to discuss aspects of the nature of science. Research has shown that QP is a challenging area for students. Because the inclusion of QP in national curricula is rather new in most countries, it is interesting to compare QP curricula from these countries to make the choices by curriculum designers visible. In this study, we provide a detailed overview of QP courses from fifteen countries. We collected and analyzed official curriculum documents to identify key items present in most curricula. Our inventory identifies a shared current core curriculum of QP which contains the following seven main categories: discrete atomic energy levels, interactions between light and matter, wave-particle duality, de Broglie wavelength, technical applications, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and the probabilistic nature of QP. We also found differences in the focus of the listed topics of certain countries, which indicate different views on teaching QP and might inspire curriculum designers struggling with QP. For instance, challenging items like QP interpretations or epistemological aspects of QP are taught only in a few countries. Although research suggests that epistemological aspects help students to comprehend novel QP concepts, many countries do not explicitly include these in the curriculum. We provide reasons and suggestions for this.

Sexual harassment occurs more frequently in male-dominated fields and physics is a more male-dominated field than most other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Thus, it is important to examine the occurrence and impact of sexual harassment on women in physics. A survey of undergraduate women, who attended a conference for undergraduate women in physics, revealed that approximately three quarters (74.3%; $338/455$) of survey respondents experienced at least one type of sexual harassment. This sample was recruited from a large fraction of undergraduate women in physics in the United States. We find that certain types of sexual harassment predict a negative sense of belonging and exacerbate the imposter phenomenon. The types of sexual harassment that predict these outcomes, both forms of gender harassment, while seemingly less severe types of harassment, have been found to have substantially negative personal and professional consequences. These findings are important since prior work has found that sense of belonging and the imposter phenomenon are related to students’ persistence in STEM fields. Our results have implications for understanding and improving persistence in physics by informing the community about the occurrence of sexual harassment and its effects so that we can begin to work towards reducing its occurrence and mitigating its effects.

In this study with 153 middle school students, we investigate the influence of the number of decimal places from the reading of a measurement device on students’ decisions to change or keep an initial hypothesis about falling objects. Participants were divided into three groups, introduced to two experiments—the time it takes a free falling object with a zero, and a nonzero initial horizontal velocity to fall a certain distance—and asked to state a hypothesis that compares the falling times of the two experiments. We asked the participants whether they wanted to change or keep their initial hypothesis after they were provided with data sets. Members of each group were given the same number of measurements but with a different number of decimal places. Results show that for an increase in the number of decimal places, the number of participants switching from a false to a correct hypothesis decreases, and at the same time the number of students switching from a correct to a false hypothesis increases. These results indicate that showing more exact data to students—given through different resolutions of the measurement device—may hinder students’ ability to compare data sets and may lead them to incorrect conclusions. We argue that this is due to students’ lack of knowledge about measurement uncertainties and the concept of variance.

Previous studies have identified physics students’ difficulties with graph slope and area under a graph in different contexts. In this study we compared physics and nonphysics (psychology) students’ understanding of graphs; i.e., we evaluated the effects of concept (graph slope vs area under graph), type of question (qualitative vs quantitative), and context (physics vs finance) on their scores, strategies, and eye-tracking data. All students solved questions about graph slope better than the questions about area under a graph. Psychology students scored rather low on the questions about area under a graph, and physics students spent more time on questions about area under a graph than on slope questions, indicating that understanding of area under a graph is quite a difficult concept that seems unlikely to develop spontaneously. Generally, physics students had comparable scores on the qualitative and quantitative questions, whereas psychology students solved qualitative questions much better. As expected, students’ scores and eye-tracking measures indicated that problems involving physics context were easier for physics students since they typically had higher scores and shorter total and axes viewing times for physics than finance questions. Some physics students may have transferred the concepts and techniques from physics to finance because they typically scored better than psychology students on the finance questions that were novel for both groups. Analysis of student strategies showed that physics students mostly relied on strategies learned in physics courses, with strong emphasis on the use of formulas, whereas psychology students mostly used common-sense strategies, as they did not know the physics formulas. The implications of the results for teaching and learning about graphs in physics courses are also discussed.