Massive pretrained language models have garnered attention and controversy due to their ability to generate humanlike responses: Attention due to their frequent indistinguishability from human-generated phraseology and narratives and controversy due to the fact that their convincingly presented arguments and facts are frequently simply false. Just how humanlike are these responses when it comes to dialogues about physics, in particular about the standard content of introductory physics courses? This case study explores that question by having ChatGPT, the preeminent language model in 2023, work through representative assessment content of an actual calculus-based physics course and grading the responses in the same way human responses would be graded. As it turns out, ChatGPT would narrowly pass this course while exhibiting many of the preconceptions and errors of a beginning learner. A discussion of possible consequences for teaching, testing, and physics education research is provided as a possible starter for more detailed studies and curricular efforts in the future.

We present an analysis of students’ thinking skills as evidenced by free-response exam problems during the Covid-19 pandemic. We compare two inquiry-based, laboratory-based classical mechanics courses, one taught online and one taught in person during the pandemic, and two inquiry-based, laboratory-based electricity and magnetism courses, one taught online and the other in person during the pandemic. We use a rubric that was previously developed based on Bloom’s taxonomy (revised version) to compare the thinking skills of students in classes taught by different pedagogies. We discuss the method and analysis, and present results and interpretations. No significant differences were found in thinking skills between students in the online and in-person pandemic classical mechanics courses. However, we did see a difference in the thinking skills between the online and in-person pandemic electricity and magnetism courses as the semester progressed.

Preparing for high-stakes exams in introductory physics courses is generally a self-regulated activity. Compared to other exam reviewing strategies, doing practice exams has been shown to help students recognize gaps in their knowledge, encourage active practicing, and produce long-term retention. However, many students, particularly students who are struggling with the course material, are not guided by research-based study strategies and do not use practice exams effectively. Using data collected from a fully online course in Spring 2021, this study examines two interventions aimed at improving student self-regulated studying behaviors and enhancing student metacognition during exam preparation. We found that a modified format of online practice exams with one attempt per question and delayed feedback, increases the accuracy of feedback about student readiness for exams but does not change the accuracy of their predicted exam scores or studying behaviors. Additionally, an added mock exam one week before the actual exam impacts students’ intentions for studying but does not impact actual study behaviors or facilitate metacognition. These results suggest that interventions designed to improve exam preparation likely need to include explicit instruction on study strategies and student beliefs about learning.

Electricity and magnetism are closely related phenomena with a well-known symmetry found in Maxwell equations. An essential part of any electricity and magnetism course includes the analysis of different field source distributions through Gauss’s and Ampere’s laws to compute and interpret different physical quantities, such as electric flux, electric and magnetic field, or magnetic circulation. Still, some students have difficulties with these calculations or, in some cases, identifying the differences between those quantities. We present this article to explore and compare the challenges that students experience when asked to compute the electric flux (surface integral of the electric field) or the magnetic circulation (line integral of the magnetic field) in a nonsymmetric field-source distribution with two opposite field sources inside a Gaussian spherical surface or Amperian circular trajectory. The sample consisted of 322 engineering students finishing an electricity and magnetism course. They were presented with two parallel problems. Half answered one in the electricity context and the other in the magnetism context. After a phenomenographic analysis, our results showed that the students’ conceptual difficulties in both contexts can be grouped into the same categories but are not contextually parallel, as has happened when analyzing other electricity and magnetism concepts. Our results also suggest that the magnetic circulation concept is far more unfamiliar to students than the electric flux. We propose several factors that could explain this finding and suggest teaching to address the conceptual difficulties identified in our analysis.

This study investigates the evolution and associations between exam grades and social comparison concern (SCC) among students in an introductory calculus-based physics course. We begin with a descriptive characterization of midterm and final exam scores as well as pre-post SCC scores, including the concurrent evolution of these scores during the course. We hypothesize a feedback loop in which changes in SCC scores are mediated by exam grades, and changes in exam scores are mediated by SCC scores. We employ a structural equation model to determine whether the data are consistent with these hypotheses. Results indicate that there were significant within-student changes in the relative grade standing from exam to exam and that changes in SCC scores depended on both the pre-SCC scores and scores on the first midterm exam. Further, we find evidence that exam scores partially mediate the association between pre- and post-SCC scores, and in turn, post-SCC scores partially mediate associations between midterm and final exam scores, though the mediation effects are somewhat small, comprising 5%–10% of the total effects between exam scores and SCC. We also find that while SCC scores are somewhat correlated with exam scores, they are only very weakly correlated with nonexam grade components, consistent with the idea that exam scores (rather than nonexam scores) are driving changes in SCC and vice versa. Overall, the results provide empirical, correlational evidence to motivate further experimental investigation into a hypothesized dynamic and iterative feedback loop in which student concern about ability or performance compared to others (SCC) can either negatively or positively interfere with student performance on exams.

In this paper, we seek to evaluate the extent to which students can follow a deductive reasoning chain when it is presented to them. A great deal of instruction in introductory physics courses is centered on presenting students with a logical argument that starts from first principles and systematically leads to a particular conclusion. This approach to instruction may conflict with current models of how students reason, including dual-process theories of reasoning and decision making. We investigated student ability to follow reasoning chains at several different institutions, across multiple topics that span introductory mechanics and electricity and magnetism. (For the purposes of this study, we operationally define “following” a reasoning chain—either a correct chain or an incorrect chain—as selecting the appropriate conclusion to a given chain.) To accomplish this, we asked students to answer a physics question and provide an explanation for their answer. We then presented them with a reasoning chain generated by a fictitious student and asked them to select the appropriate concluding statement for that chain. Some of these fictitious chains were fully correct, while others contained a conceptual or logical error. We intentionally used tasks for which students would be unlikely to generate correct reasoning chains on their own. We found that for most tasks, students were generally successful at following chains based on common incorrect reasoning. Students who themselves generated the correct reasoning, however, were much more successful at following correct reasoning chains. Connections between this work and dual-process theories, as well as implications for instruction, are discussed.

Work and mechanical energy is a fundamental topic in introductory physics. Studies in existing literature have shown that students have difficulties in understanding work and mechanical energy, particularly the topic of work-energy theorem. To study students’ knowledge integration in learning work and mechanical energy, a conceptual framework model of work and mechanical energy was developed and applied to guide the design of an assessment for measuring students’ level of knowledge integration. Using the assessment, qualitative and quantitative data were collected in two high schools in an eastern Chinese city. The results reveal that the conceptual framework model can effectively represent the students’ knowledge structures at different levels of knowledge integration. In addition, the assessment is shown effective in identifying unique features of knowledge integration, including context dependence and fragmentation of knowledge components, memorization-based problem-solving strategies, and lack of meaningful connections between work and change in kinetic energy. The conceptual framework of work and mechanical energy and assessment results can provide useful information to facilitate instructional designs to promote knowledge integration.

Women and many people of color continue to be minoritized in STEM and notably in physics. We conducted two studies demonstrating that exposure to counternarratives about who does physics and why one does physics significantly increases high school students—especially women’s—physics-related career intentions. These counternarratives facilitate making connections with students’ career plans and help in sensemaking causes for the continued minoritization of women in physics. Two separate studies measured the impacts of these interventions on students’ physics-related career intentions: first, with an intentionally selected group of teachers (10 teachers, 823 students) across regions and contexts in the U.S.; second, with a randomly sampled group of teachers (13 teachers, 1509 students) from three regions that also included a comparable control group. The results clearly show the importance of exposure to counternarratives in the development of high school students’ career interests, particularly for women and minoritized racial or ethnic groups, and that such counternarratives may help to address systemic issues of underrepresentation in STEM.

Limiting case analysis (LCA) is important to practicing physicists. Yet, there is little concrete guidance for physics educators, and a lack of consensus in the research community about how to help students learn, and learn from, limiting case analysis. In this study, we first review existing literature to find commonalities and variations in how instructors encourage and assess students’ limiting case analysis and to highlight how it has been used by practicing physicists. Then, we examine written work from successive cohorts of physics students, all of whom have completed a course with the same instructor who emphasizes limiting case analysis in his teaching. We frame our analysis largely in terms of the theoretical framework of “adaptive expertise,” finding support in the literature for the view that it is the nonalgorithmic and even playful aspects of LCA that are instrumental to its alignment with adaptive expertise rather than routine expertise. Analysis of students’ commentary about how they decide which limiting cases to examine when evaluating the reasonableness of an equation provides new insights into how LCA might be better supported in the classroom so that more students can access this important tool of physics.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Participation in undergraduate research experiences (UREs) has been identified as an important way of increasing undergraduate retention, interest, and identity within the sciences. Course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have been shown to have similar outcomes to UREs but can reach a larger number of students at one time and are accessible to any student simply through enrollment in a course. One key component of a CURE is that students must participate in authentic scientific discovery in which they answer a question where the answer is initially unknown to both students and the scientific community. Here, we present student experiences with authentic research in a large, introductory physics CURE conducted remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. We use student responses to a closed ended survey question, as well as written responses to an open-ended end-of-course assignment to investigate what aspects of real research students felt that they participated in and the extent to which students felt that they participated in authentic research. Most students in the course felt like they engaged in real-world research during the course and a large number of students highlighted their experience with authentic research when asked to describe their experience in the course more broadly. We discuss which elements of the course may have contributed to the students’ experiences of authentic research.

We examine the effectiveness of a planning prompt intervention to reduce procrastination on online homework for college students. The intervention asked students to indicate their intention to earn small amounts of extra credit for completing assignments earlier and form a plan to realize their intentions. Students’ learning behavior is measured by five data metrics collected from gradebook and student interaction logs from four sections of the same college level physics course, including three metrics that capture how students space their work on assignments and two that measure the level of student engagement when completing assignments. To separate the impact of extraneous factors from the treatment effect, we employ a “difference in differences” method—initially developed in economics—and construct multilinear models for each of the five metrics. Our models show that by simply asking students to form a plan prior to the assignment, students on average earned 5% more extra credit, completed homework significantly earlier, and spread out their work significantly more. However, the intervention did not significantly change students’ level of engagement with the learning materials, nor did it change students’ work distribution on the next assignment.

Science education research has repeatedly revealed students’ problems with understanding the energy concept, in particular, their understanding of potential energy. Newer research suggests that teaching students fields as a means to store potential energy may promote a more consistent understanding of the energy concept. Yet, it is presently unknown if the helpfulness of fields is limited to particular manifestations of potential energy or if the conceptualization of potential energy as energy stored in fields may constitute a coherent approach that supports students’ continued learning on energy. To address this issue, we carried out a quasiexperimental pre-post-test study with $N=64$ students from grade 6, with students being assigned to one of two conditions (fields-based vs nonfields-based approach to energy instruction). We also compared students continued learning in a subsequent unit on electric energy. Our findings suggest that students in the fields approach not only outperformed students in the nonfields approach, they were, in particular, able to use their understanding of potential energy to make better sense of electric energy, a form of energy previously unknown to them. The results of our study imply that fields can help students develop a deeper understanding of energy, in particular potential energy, and support continued learning about energy; that is, the learning about additional forms of energy.

Computation is intertwined with essentially all aspects of physics research and is invaluable for physicists’ careers. Despite its disciplinary importance, integration of computation into physics education remains a challenge and, moreover, has tended to be constructed narrowly as a route to solving physics problems. Here, we broaden Physics Education Research’s conception of computation by constructing a metamodel—a model of modeling—incorporating insights on computational modeling from the philosophy of science and prior work. The metamodel is formulated in terms of practices, things physicists do, and how these inform one another. We operationalize this metamodel in an educational environment that incorporates making, the creation of shared physical and digital artifacts, intended to promote students’ agency, creativity, and self-expression alongside doing physics. We present a content analysis of student work from initial implementations of this approach to illustrate the very complex epistemic maneuvers students make as they engaged in computational modeling. We demonstrate how our metamodel can be used to understand student practices and conclude with implications of the metamodel for instruction and future research.

We investigated how the endorsement of gender stereotypes affects disciplinary identity across three different science-technology-engineering-mathematics (STEM) areas: physics, biology, and chemistry, and whether such relationship is mediated by self-concept constructs, such as self-efficacy and perceived academic control. Building on the ambivalent sexism theory and masculine ideology paradigm, we focused on gender stereotypes based on hostile and benevolent sexism and on male role norms. A sample of 1406 Italian high school students ($\text{girls}=742$) was involved in the study. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationships. Results show that the adherence to male role norms and the rejection of hostile sexism have a significant effect on the development of a disciplinary identity in the three targeted STEM domains. However, such an effect is fully mediated by self-efficacy and perceived academic control. Moreover, the identity in the three addressed STEM domains is differently affected by the endorsement of stereotypes, with physics and biology being more largely affected than chemistry. More importantly, the endorsement of hostile sexism stereotypes significantly decreases the perceived self-efficacy, while higher levels of perceived academic control are predicted by higher levels of endorsement of male role norms, for both girls and boys. Our findings suggest that to reduce the perception of femininity as incongruent with STEM identification, it would be necessary to deconstruct the masculine view of self-efficacy and academic control.

The present study examined demographic and academic predictors of astronomy performance among a cohort of $N=1909$ community college students enrolled in astronomy courses in a large suburban community college during a four-year time frame, 2015–2019. The theoretical framework was based upon a deconstructive approach for predicting community college performance, whereby students’ academic pathways through higher education institutions are examined to understand their dynamic interaction with institutional integration and progress toward academic goals. Transcript data analysis was employed to elicit student demographics and longitudinal academic coursework and performance. A logistic regression model was generated to identify significant predictors of astronomy performance, which included mathematics achievement, enrollment in remedial mathematics, and enrollment in multiple astronomy courses. The results imply a greater focus on mathematics preparation and performance may mediate astronomy outcomes for community college students. Notably, demographic variables including ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, and age were not significant predictors of astronomy performance in the multivariable model, suggesting the course is a potential gateway for diversifying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics access. Also, astronomy interest, as measured by enrollment in multiple astronomy courses, was related to performance. Further implications for practice are discussed.

Researchers in physics education have advocated both for including modeling in science classrooms as well as promoting student engagement with sensemaking. These two processes facilitate the generation of new knowledge by connecting to one’s existing ideas. Despite being two distinct processes, modeling is often described as sensemaking of the physical world. In the current work, we provide an explicit, framework-based analysis of the intertwining between modeling and sensemaking by analyzing think-aloud interviews of two students solving a physics problem. While one student completes the task, the other abandons their approach. The case studies reveal that particular aspects of modeling and sensemaking processes co-occur. For instance, the priming on the ‘given’ information from the problem statement constituted the students’ engagement with their mental models, and their attempts to resolve inconsistencies in understanding involved the use of external representations. We find that barriers experienced in modeling can inhibit students’ sustained sensemaking. These results suggest ways for future research to support students’ sensemaking in physics by promoting modeling practices.

As quantum information science and technology (QIST) is becoming more prevalent and occurring not only in research labs but also in industry, many educators are considering how best to incorporate learning about quantum mechanics into various levels of education. Although much of the focus has been on quantum concepts in nonlab courses, current work in QIST has a substantial experimental component. Many instructors of undergraduate lab courses want to provide their students the opportunity to work with quantum experiments. One common way this is done is through a sequence of quantum optics experiments often referred to as the “single-photon experiments.” These experiments demonstrate fundamental quantum phenomena with equipment common to research labs; however, they are resource intensive and cannot be afforded by all institutions. It is therefore imperative to know what unique affordances these experiments provide to students. As a starting point, we surveyed and interviewed instructors who use the single-photon experiments in undergraduate courses, asking how and why they use the experiments. We describe the most commonly used experiments in both quantum and beyond-first-year lab courses, the prevalence of actions the students perform, and the learning goals, ranging from conceptual knowledge to lab skills to student affect. Finally, we present some strategies from these data demonstrating how instructors have addressed the common challenges of preparing students to work with conceptually and technically complex experiments and balancing the practice of technical skills with the completion of the experiments.

A large-enrollment, introductory physics laboratory course at the University of Colorado Boulder has undergone a recent transformation to help students’ develop lab skills and better align students’ views and beliefs about experimental physics with those of expert experimental physicists through engagement with authentic scientific practices. We examine the impact of the transformation on women and men in the course and report the effect of this transformation on the students’ views and beliefs using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS) as a measurement tool. We analyze over 3000 student responses from both before and after the transformation for both women and men on overall E-CLASS scores, as well as item-by-item. The results show statistically significant increase in the overall average E-CLASS score after the transformation as compared to that of the course before the transformation regardless of gender. In addition, item-by-item analysis indicates that there are larger gains in a few E-CLASS items, especially those related to the new course learning goals and some of these items are different for women and men. Our results show that students can have different lab experiences depending on their identity, an important aspect that should to be taken into account when designing educational interventions.

Mainstream physics teaching and learning produces material outcomes that, when analyzed through the lens of Critical Race Theory, point to white supremacy, or “the systemic maintenance of the dominant position that produces white privilege” (Battey & Levya, 2016). In particular, the continued, extreme underrepresentation of People of Color in physics and a growing number of first-person accounts of the harm that People of Color experience in physics classrooms and departments speak to a system that valorizes whiteness and marginalizes People of Color. If we take Critical Race Theory as a lens, we expect that maintaining white supremacy in physics happens in part via discipline-specific instantiations of broader mechanisms that reproduce whiteness. In this study, we illustrate one such mechanism: race evasiveness, a powerful ideology that uses race-neutral discourse to explain away racialized phenomena, evading race as a shaping force in social phenomena. We offer examples from interviews with twelve university physics faculty, showing what race-evasive discourses can look like in physics and how physics epistemologies, discourses, and stories reify race-evasive frames. This work aims to support faculty in refusing race evasiveness in physics teaching and learning, toward developing race-conscious analyses that can help us challenge white supremacy in our discipline.

This study developed and validated an instrument to investigate senior school students’ understanding of electrostatics and provide a cognitive diagnostic assessment of their strengths and weaknesses on the related concepts (e.g., electric charge). The instrument included 20 four-tier multiple-choice items and the development process is organized around two activities: the development of the instrument and its validation. The development step defined the secondary concepts and designed the items using the misconceptions related to them. In the validation step, the instrument was applied to 1850 senior high school students from nine schools in two provinces in China, and the collected data were analyzed using the CDM package in R language. This step ensures that the diagnostic reports represent students’ conceptual understanding reliably and validly by selecting the best model, analyzing item quality, overall test reliability, and the instrument’s structure. The instrument can provide the percentage of students in the test population who possess certain combinations of concepts, the percentage of students in the test population possessing individual concepts, and the fine-grained size of concept proficiency information, which can be integrated as one completed report to issue to students, teachers, and parents to demonstrate students’ status of conceptual understanding related to electrostatics. In addition, the construct induced from the diagnostic results can also be aggregated to the classroom, schools for instruction planning or low-stakes decision making, or infer a learning sequence.