[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Quantum mechanics is a field often considered very mathematical, abstract, and unintuitive. One way some instructors are hoping to help familiarize their students with these complex topics is to have the students see quantum effects in experiments in undergraduate instructional labs. Here, we present results from an interview study about what it means to both instructors and students to see quantum effects in experiments. We focus on a popular set of quantum optics experiments and find that students believe they are observing quantum effects and achieving related learning goals by working with these experiments. Although it is not possible to see the quantum phenomena directly with their eyes, students point out different aspects of the experiments that contribute to them observing quantum effects. This often includes seeing the experimental results, sometimes in conjunction with interacting with or understanding part of the experiment. There is additional variation across student achievement of the various related learning goals, ranging from many of the students being excited about these experiments and making a connection between the mathematical theory and the experiments to only some of the students seeing a connection between these experiments and quantum technologies. This work can help instructors consider the importance and framing of quantum experiments and raises questions about when and how in the curriculum quantum experiments can be best utilized and how to make related learning goals available to all students.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Qualitative Methods in PER: A Critical Examination.] All people vary in their needs and abilities; however, typical research practices do not consider these variations, which likely impacts who participates in research studies. Additionally, few PER studies have investigated aspects of disability or reported disability identity. Combined, this means that PER researchers typically do not seek out the experiences of disabled people and disabled people might not have access to participate in research studies. In this paper, we demonstrate how a research team can use principles from Universal Design for Learning and the Variation Planning Tool to anticipate expectations of ability and create flexible options in a qualitative research study. We then demonstrate how different interview structures can impact disabled participants through a case study with three participants, all of whom self-identified as students with attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. Finally, we conclude with implications and suggestions for researchers in planning their study designs. It is critical that, as physics education researchers, we anticipate, welcome, and support disabled participants in our research, particularly as interviews are a prevalent method in the field. Through the example presented in this paper, we hope to encourage researchers to examine their own methods through the lens of accessibility and to offer alternative formats in their research design as a means to combat ableism and to provide access to all research participants.

Linear functions are an essential part of school and university education. Nevertheless, this topic is challenging for many students—especially in STEM topics. In this article, we contribute to the understanding of learning difficulties in the context of mathematical and physical problems. Here, we present the results of an eye-tracking study on visual attention during the interpretation of linear graphs using the gaze-cued retrospective think-aloud (RTA) method. Gaze data of $N=131$ and interview data of $N=60$ grammar school students were recorded while solving items of a validated test instrument: pairs of items in a mathematical and kinematic context that are isomorphic, i.e., have similar surface features and require the same procedure to solve. We will show that the difficulties in interpreting the kinematic diagrams, which have already been identified in 9th-grade students, are still present in students in the entry phase of the upper secondary level. Further, students’ eye-tracking behavior differs significantly between mathematical and kinematic contexts. Triangulation of eye-tracking data with RTA data reveals context-dependent solution strategies—transfer from mathematics to physics is a major problem for students.

Students at all levels of education experience difficulties with the concepts of measurement uncertainties. One task that includes concepts of measurement uncertainties is a data comparison problem where students decide whether two datasets are in agreement or not—an authentic scientific practice. To aid students with these concepts and tasks, sensitive instruments are needed that probe students’ understanding and track their progress. We present a tool in the form of a coding manual that analyzes students’ written justifications for such a data comparison problem. With this coding manual, justifications are coded based on the quantity that is compared and the deciding criterion in this comparison. Our coding manual was used in the evaluation of a digital learning environment (DLE). In this evaluation, 154 participants (aged 14–17 years) wrote a justification for a data comparison problem before and after going through the DLE. These participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups where each group was taught an increased amount of concepts regarding measurement uncertainties. By analyzing the participants’ justifications with our coding manual, we could probe their ability to compare datasets on a fine-grained level. The sensitivity of our tool was illustrated by the increase in higher quality codes with the increased conceptual teaching between the three groups. We argue that our tool for coding justifications can be applied to any data comparison problem giving detailed information about what data analysis methods students use and how they reach their conclusion and thus contributes to the research on students’ understanding of measurement uncertainties.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Research on nontraditional laboratory (lab) activities in physics shows that students often expect to verify predetermined results, as takes place in traditional lab activities. This understanding of what is taking place, or epistemic framing, may impact students’ behaviors in the lab, either productively or unproductively. In this paper, we present an analysis of student epistemic framing in a nontraditional lab with the aim of understanding how instructional context, specifically instructor behaviors, may shape student framing. We present video data from a lab section taught by an experienced teaching assistant (TA), with 19 students working in seven groups. We argue that student framing in this lab is evidenced by whether or not students articulate experimental predictions and by the extent to which they take up cognitive authority when constructing knowledge (epistemic agency). We show that the TA’s attempts to shift student frames generally succeed with respect to experimental predictions but are less successful with respect to epistemic agency. In part, we suggest, the success of the TA’s attempts reflects whether and how they are responsive to students’ current framing. This work offers evidence that instructors can shift students’ frames in nontraditional labs, while also illuminating the complexities of both student framing and the role of the instructor in shifting that framing in this context.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Measurement uncertainty is a critical feature of experimental research in the physical sciences, and the concepts and practices surrounding measurement uncertainty are important components of physics lab courses. However, there has not been a broadly applicable, research-based assessment tool that allows physics instructors to easily measure students’ knowledge of measurement uncertainty concepts and practices. To address this need, we employed evidence-centered design to create the Survey of Physics Reasoning on Uncertainty Concepts in Experiments (SPRUCE). SPRUCE is a pre-post assessment instrument intended for use in introductory (first and second year) physics lab courses to help instructors and researchers identify student strengths and challenges with measurement uncertainty. In this paper, we discuss the development of SPRUCE’s assessment items guided by evidence-centered design, focusing on how instructors’ and researchers’ assessment priorities were incorporated into the assessment items and how students’ reasoning from pilot testing informed decisions around item answer options. We also present an example of some of the feedback an instructor would receive after implementing SPRUCE in a pre-post fashion, along with a brief discussion of how that feedback could be interpreted and acted upon.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Qualitative Methods in PER: A Critical Examination.] Identifying student ideas about particular physics topics is one of the earliest and longest-standing foci of physics education research. This paper presents a method for identifying common conceptual resources for understanding physics, using large numbers of written student responses to conceptual questions. We walk researchers step by step through how we have done this ourselves, from collecting data, to identifying candidate resources, to turning our lists of candidate resources into a coding scheme that can then be applied to datasets of $>200$ responses. The outcome of these methods are lists of common conceptual resources for understanding particular topics in physics, such as forces, energy, circuits, and heat and temperature.

In this study, we investigated female and male students’ sense of belonging and their academic performance measured by the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) and course grades in a calculus-based introductory physics course at a large public university in the United States. We find that compared to male students, female students’ sense of belonging was lower on average, and this gender gap persisted from the beginning to the end of the course. Moreover, both women’s and men’s sense of belonging decreased after the course. We also find that while there was no gender difference in students’ Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) math scores and female students had a higher average high school grade point average (GPA) than male students, female students had lower average FCI scores and course grades than male students. Using structural equation modeling, we find that students’ sense of belonging statistically significantly predicts their FCI scores and course grades after controlling for SAT math scores and high school GPA. Our findings suggest that physics instructors should be intentional about creating an inclusive and equitable learning environment in which students from all demographic groups have a high sense of belonging and can excel.

The ability to express scientific concepts in mathematical terms and integrate scientific and mathematical reasoning about a phenomenon is a foundational cognitive process involved in scientific thinking. This process called “blended math-science sensemaking” (MSS) is a desired skill for all science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) students, but few students are learning it, and there is little research on how to teach it. In this work we introduce the development and testing of a novel instructional method for teaching MSS that is suitable for use in STEM courses in undergraduate and K-12 educational settings. This study builds on our past work on developing and validating a framework for characterizing in detail the cognitive levels involved in such sensemaking. This work uses the unique power of interactive simulations for assessing and developing MSS. We designed instructional activities to help students use MSS in the contexts of heat capacity and Coulomb’s law. The heat capacity activity was piloted in a freshmen chemistry course and the Coulomb’s law activity was piloted in a freshmen physics course. The results indicate that for students who came in with no knowledge of the relevant equation the activity supported the development of both the equation, and their understanding of the mathematical relationships of the equation. These results indicate that the teaching approach helps students engage in MSS at higher levels of cognitive complexity.

Students’ motivational beliefs, such as disciplinary intelligence mindsets, can influence their physics performance and persistence. Intelligence mindset beliefs have long been argued to fall along of continuum between fixed and growth mindsets. Those with fixed physics mindsets believe that ability in physics is innate and unchangable, while those with growth mindset believe that ability in physics can be developed with effort. More recent research with physical science and engineering majors suggests these are somewhat separable beliefs, with some students believing aspects of both fixed and growth mindsets, and that students can hold different beliefs about typical other students versus beliefs about themselves (e.g., others could improve through effort but they themselves could not). In this study, 419 students in physics 1 for students pursuing bioscience majors took pre- and post-physics mindset surveys. We investigated whether the physics mindset views of students pursuing bioscience or health-related majors were separable into more nuanced dimensions, if the means and distribution of these views varied by gender or sex and over time, and if any of these views predicted course grade. Replicating prior findings with physical science and engineering majors, we found that intelligence mindsets can be divided into four separable but correlated constructs: my ability, my growth, others’ ability, and others’ growth. Further, in this bioscience or health-related majors group, the “ability” beliefs grew stronger and the “growth” beliefs became weaker over time. These shifts were particularly strong for women. The changes in beliefs were also stronger for “my” beliefs than “others” beliefs for both men and women Unfortunately, my ability and my growth scores were also the strongest predictors of course grades above and beyond academic preparation differences as assessed by high school GPA and SAT/ACT math scores. These findings have implications for eliminating classroom inequities, such as through the development of new mindset interventions.

Collaborative learning with peers can lead to students learning from each other and solving physics problems correctly not only in situations in which one student knows how to solve the problems but also when none of the students can solve the problems alone. We define the rate of construction as the percentage of groups collaborating on problem solving that solve the problem correctly out of all groups having at least one member who answered correctly and one incorrectly while solving the same problem individually first. We define the rate of co-construction on each problem as the percentage of collaborating groups that answered it correctly if no student in the group individually answered it correctly before the collaborative work. In this study, we investigated student learning measured by student performance on a validated quantum mechanics survey and rates of construction and co-construction of knowledge when students first worked individually after lecture-based instruction in relevant concepts and then worked with peers during class without receiving any feedback from the course instructor. We find that construction of knowledge consistently occurred at a high rate during peer collaboration. However, rates of co-construction were more varied. High rates of co-construction were generally achieved when approximately half of the students knew the correct answers initially. We also conducted an analysis of some of the survey questions that correlate with high rates of co-construction to gain some insight into what students converged on after peer interaction and what types of difficulties were reduced. Our findings can be valuable for instructors who want to provide in-class and out-of-class opportunities for peer collaboration in their physics courses.

The Energy and Momentum Conceptual Survey (EMCS) is a multiple-choice survey that contains conceptual problems involving a variety of energy and momentum concepts covered in a typical introductory physics course for science and engineering majors. Prior studies suggest that many concepts on the survey are challenging for introductory physics students and the average student scores after traditional lecture-based instruction are low. The research presented here investigates the progression in student understanding of the EMCS concepts including their evolution from the beginning to the end of their courses in introductory and advanced-level undergraduate physics after traditional lecture-based instruction. We find that on all EMCS questions on which less than 50% of the introductory physics students answered a question correctly after traditional instruction, less than two-thirds of the upper-level undergraduate students provided the correct response after traditional lecture-based instruction. We discuss the EMCS questions that remain challenging and the common alternate conceptions among upper-level students. The findings presented here are consistent with prior research showing that traditional instruction in upper-level courses, which typically focuses primarily on quantitative problem solving and often incentivizes the use of algorithmic approaches, is not effective in helping many students develop a functional understanding of underlying concepts.

A significant proportion of universities throughout the world switched from conventional face-to-face course delivery to emergency remote teaching (ERT) in response to the pervasive COVID-19 outbreak. A series of challenges are faced by both teachers and students as a result of the rapid and abrupt switch to ERT. Within the context of ERT, physics courses encounter certain challenges in contrast to certain liberal arts courses. In particular, this study sought to determine whether physics students and nonphysics students had diverse levels of flow experience and cognitive load when applying ERT during the global pandemic period. Furthermore, this study examined whether ERT for physics students varied depending on gender and educational level. Following the completion of their ERT courses at the end of both the Spring semester of 2020 and the Fall semester of 2022, a total of 1073 participants, including both physics majors and nonphysics majors, participated in our research. From the result, physics students had better performance in the flow experience encompassing its three constructs: enjoyment, engagement, and control. Physics students demonstrated a higher germane cognitive load and a lower extraneous cognitive load when compared to nonphysics students. Moreover, a considerably higher extraneous cognitive load was observed among male physics students than among their female counterparts during the ERT. Nonetheless, physics students at undergraduate and graduate levels did not significantly differ in their flow experiences or cognitive load. Overall, physics majors had a more positive perception of their ERT learning experience, and the impact of ERT on physics students was significantly less detrimental.

Research-validated multiple-choice questions comprise an easy-to-implement instructional tool that serves to scaffold student learning and formatively assess students’ knowledge. We present findings from the implementation, in consecutive years, of a research-validated multiple-choice question sequence [referred to in this study as a clicker question sequence (CQS)] on quantum measurement as it applies to two-state quantum systems. This study was conducted in an advanced undergraduate quantum mechanics course, in both online and in-person learning environments across three years. Student learning was assessed after traditional lecture-based instruction in relevant concepts, and their performance was compared with that on a similar assessment given after engaging with the CQS. We analyze, compare, and discuss the trends observed in the three implementations.

Understanding how relationships between instructors and students develop is important for understanding the undergraduate student experience. We expect the development of positive relationships is related to the social practices (e.g., greetings, using names, sympathizing, or empathizing with students) that instructors use in the course of normal classroom interactions with students. We recorded interactions between instructors and students in remote synchronous online physics problem-solving sessions and surveyed students about their perceptions of their instructors. We selected the highest-rated instructor and lowest-rated instructor in our sample and identified social practices in their conversations with students. We first characterized the frequency of social practice usage by each instructor in their conversations with students. We find that both instructors relied on a set of core social practices in most conversations with students, but that our higher-rated instructor used comparatively more positive commentary and sympathizing or empathizing behaviors than our lower-rated instructor. In comparison, our lower-rated instructor engaged in more negative commentary. Using network analysis, we then explored patterns in co-occurrences of social practices used by each instructor moment-to-moment in conversations and compared the instructors’ social practice network patterns. We find that our higher rated-instructor used a greater variety of social practices during moment-to-moment interactions with students, while our lower-rated instructor spent most of his time focused on classroom business. We suggest that professional development for instructors should include guidance on how messages are delivered in classes and encourage the use of high-impact social practices to foster positive relationships with students.

The recent advancement of large language models presents numerous opportunities for teaching and learning. Despite widespread public debate regarding the use of large language models, empirical research on their opportunities and risks in education remains limited. In this work, we demonstrate the qualities and shortcomings of using ChatGPT 3.5 for physics task development by prospective teachers. In a randomized controlled trial, 26 prospective physics teacher students were divided into two groups: the first group used ChatGPT 3.5 to develop text-based physics tasks for four different concepts in the field of kinematics for 10th-grade high school students, while the second group used a classical textbook to create tasks for the same concepts and target group. The results indicate no difference in task correctness, but students using the textbook achieved a higher clarity and more frequently embedded their questions in a meaningful context. Both groups adapted the level of task difficulty easily to the target group but struggled strongly with sufficient task specificity, i.e., relevant information to solve the tasks was missing. Students using ChatGPT for problem posing rated high system usability but experienced difficulties with output quality. These results provide insights into the opportunities and pitfalls of using large language models in education.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Most, if not all, physics undergraduate degree programs include instructional lab experiences. Physics lab instructors, both faculty and staff, are instrumental to student learning in instructional physics labs. However, the faculty-staff dichotomy belies the complex, varied, and multifaceted landscape of positions that lab instructors hold in the fabrics of physics departments. Here we present the results of a mixed-methods study of the people who teach instructional labs and their professional contexts. Recruiting physics lab instructors across the United States, we collected 84 survey responses and conducted 12 in-depth interviews about their job characteristics, professional identities, resources, and experiences. Our investigation reveals that lab instructors vary in terms of their official titles, job descriptions, formal duties, personal agency, and access to resources. We also identified common themes around the value of instructional labs, mismatched job descriptions, and a broad set of necessary skills and expertise. Our results suggest that instructors often occupy overlapping roles that fall in between more canonical jobs in physics departments. By understanding the professional contexts of physics lab instructors, the rest of the physics community can better promote and engage with their critical work, improving laboratory learning both for students and for the lab instructors who teach and support them.

We add to a growing literature suggesting that demographic grade gaps should be attributed to biases embedded in the courses themselves. Changes in the structure of two different introductory physics classes were made while leaving the topics covered and the level of coverage unchanged. First, a class where conceptual issues were studied before doing any complicated calculations had zero final exam grade gap between students from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups and their peers. Next, four classes that offered students a retake exam each week between the regular bi-weekly exams during the term had zero gender gap in course grades. Our analysis indicates that demographic grade gaps can be attributed to the course structure (a course deficit model) rather than to student preparation (a student deficit model).