Affective and cognitive outcomes of science teaching in schools may be enhanced by science outreach labs (SOLs). Particularly interesting is whether and how to connect SOL visits to in-school science learning. Recent studies—among others, in this journal—have confirmed SOLs’ positive affective effects. However, research remains inconclusive regarding cognitive outcomes, the effects of connecting SOLs to classroom teaching, and effects beyond the short term. This study more closely investigates the short- and medium-term effectiveness of SOLs on affective (interest, self-concept) and cognitive variables (conceptual and procedural knowledge), as well as the effects of integrating lab work with school-based preparation and post-lab activities. A quasi-experimental intervention study via a repeated measures design and two SOL treatment groups (TG1/2: with and without integration), and an in-school control group (CG; also with integration of pre- and postlab activities, in accordance with good practice) was undertaken. It took place in a lab work unit on “pressure and buoyancy” for the lower secondary level, with identical instruction and the same instructor across groups, and with several further control measures. The main findings are as follows: (i) SOLs can have substantial learning and affective outcomes [pre-post learning gains: Cohen’s $d>1$; increases in interest ($d>0.8$) and self-concept ($d\approx 0.5$) immediately after the visit]. (ii) Learning gains were still present at medium term ($d>0.7$) but not affective ones. (iii) Integration with classroom teaching was necessary for learning (TG1 vs TG2: $d=0.72$), and not harmful for interest. (iv) Learning and affective outcomes of an integrated SOL are as good as those of a well-prepared classroom setting, but not better. (v) No interactions of the outcome variables with gender and other covariates were found; the lab work units appeared suitable for both sexes and different kinds of learners. These findings are discussed with respect to current theories of learning and interest development, and SOLs’ added value to science education.

Understanding how physicists solve problems can guide the development of methods that help students learn and improve at solving complex problems. Leveraging the framework of cognitive task analysis, we conducted semistructured interviews with theoretical physicists ($N=11$) to gain insight into the cognitive processes and skills that they use in their professional research. Among numerous activities that theorists described, here we elucidate two activities that theorists commonly characterized as being integral to their work: making assumptions and using analogies. Theorists described making assumptions throughout their research process, especially while setting their project’s direction and goals, establishing their model’s interaction with mathematics, and revising their model while troubleshooting. They described how assumptions about their model informed their mathematical decision making, as well as instances where mathematical steps fed back into their model’s applicability. We found that theorists used analogies to generate new project ideas as well as overcome conceptual challenges. Theorists deliberately sought out or constructed analogies, indicating this is a skill students can practice. When mapping knowledge from one system to another, theorists used systems that shared a high degree of mathematical similarity; however, these systems did not always share similar surface features. We conclude by discussing connections between the ways theorists use assumption and analogy and offering potential new avenues of research regarding applications to instruction.

Students’ self-efficacy in physics classes can play a key role in shaping course outcomes. Prior research has shown that women have a lower self-efficacy than men in calculus-based introductory physics courses. We administered a validated survey to 564 students to investigate the gender differences in self-efficacy and how it predicts student grades at the end of a mandatory two-semester introductory physics course sequence primarily for bioscience majors in which women outnumber men. We used structural equation modeling to investigate how students’ self-efficacy predicts female and male students’ grade at the end of the course. We found that women had a lower self-efficacy and grade than men and that the students’ self-efficacy played a major role in predicting students’ grade even though women outnumbered men in this physics course. This study hints at the fact that numerical representation alone is not sufficient, e.g., to mitigate the effects of deep-rooted societal stereotypes and biases related to who belongs in physics and can excel in it. Thus, it is important for physics instructors to be intentional about creating equitable and inclusive learning environments in which all students, particularly those from traditionally marginalized groups such as women, have high self-efficacy and can thrive.

Engaging in interactions with peers is important for student learning. Many studies have quantified patterns of student interactions in in-person physics courses using social network analysis, finding different network structures between instructional contexts (lecture and laboratory) and styles (active and traditional). Such studies also find inconsistent results as to whether and how student-level variables (e.g., grades and demographics) relate to the formation of interaction networks. In this cross-sectional research study, we investigate these relationships further by examining lecture and lab interaction networks in four different remote physics courses spanning various instructional styles and student populations. We apply statistical methods from social network analysis—exponential random graph models—to measure the relationship between network formation and multiple variables: students’ discussion and lab section enrollment, final course grades, gender, and race or ethnicity. Similar to previous studies of in-person courses, we find that remote lecture interaction networks contain large clusters connecting many students, while remote lab interaction networks contain smaller clusters of a few students. Our statistical analysis suggests that these distinct network structures arise from a combination of both instruction-level and student-level variables, including the learning goals of each instructional context, whether assignments are completed in groups or individually, and the distribution of gender and major of students enrolled in a course. We further discuss how these and other variables help to understand the formation of interaction networks in both remote and in-person physics courses.

As systematic inequities in higher education and society have been brought to the forefront, graduate programs are interested in increasing the diversity of their applicants and enrollees. Yet, structures in place to evaluate applicants may not support such aims. One potential solution to support those aims is rubric-based holistic review. Starting in 2018, our physics department implemented a rubric-based holistic review process for all applicants to our graduate program. The rubric assessed applicants on 18 metrics covering their grades, test scores, research experiences, noncognitive competencies, and fit with the program. We then compared faculty’s ratings of applicants by admission status, sex, and undergraduate program over a three-year period. We find that the rubric scores show statistically significant differences between admitted and nonadmitted students as hoped. We also find that differences in rubric scores based on sex or undergraduate program reflected known systematic inequities such as applicants from smaller and less prestigious undergraduate universities scoring lower on the physics GRE and women performing more volunteer work in academia. Our results then suggest rubric-based holistic review as a possible route to making graduate admissions in physics more equitable.

At a large, diverse, hispanic-serving, master’s-granting university, the Alma Project was created to support the rich connections of life experiences of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) students that come from racially diverse backgrounds through reflective journaling. Utilizing frameworks in ethnic studies and social psychology, the Alma Project aims to make learning STEM inclusive by affirming the intersectional identities and cultural wealth that students bring into STEM classrooms. Approximately once per month students who participate in the Alma Project spend 5–10 min at the beginning of class responding to questions designed to affirm their values and purpose for studying STEM in college. Students then spend time in class sharing their responses with their peers, to the extent that they feel comfortable, including common struggles and successes in navigating through college and STEM spaces. For this study, we analyze 180 reflective journaling essays of students enrolled in General Physics I, an algebra-based introductory physics course primarily for life science majors. Students were enrolled in a required lab, a self-selected community-based learning program (Supplemental Instruction), or in a small number of instances, both. Using the community cultural wealth framework to anchor our analysis, we identified 11 cultural capitals that students often expressed within these physics spaces. Students in both populations frequently expressed aspirational, attainment, and navigational capital, while expressions of other cultural capitals, such as social capital, differ in the two populations. Our findings suggest that students bring rich and diverse perspectives into physics classrooms when asked to reflect about their lived experiences. Moreover, our study provides evidence that reflective journaling can be used as an asset-based teaching tool. By using reflective journaling in physics spaces, recognizing students’ assets has the potential for physics educators to leverage students’ lived experiences, goals, and values to make physics learning more meaningful and engaging.

Visual representation in school textbooks plays an important role for physics teaching and learning. The integration of graphics with text has drawn attention of physics educators in recent years due to the close relationship between graphics and relevant text. The purpose of this study is to examine visual representation of optical content in three physics textbooks commonly used in China and Singapore. Based on a revised version of graphical analysis protocol, this study focuses on two aspects of visual representation: (i) presentation of graphics, and (ii) integration of graphics with corresponding text. The content analysis approach was adopted as the research methodology with 115 graphics taken from the three physics textbooks being the analysis target. The results show that the three textbooks had considerable differences in terms of graphical presentations and that they contained a small percentage of high systematical representations. On integration of graphics with text, each textbook was found to be unique. Based on the results of this study, some recommendations are provided for visual representation in physics textbooks so as to enhance the effectiveness of textbooks on teaching and learning, such as highlighting physical and semantic integration of text with graphics.

Two-stage collaborative exams are an increasingly popular form of formative assessment which have shown promising results in promoting student learning. While the benefit of two-stage collaborative exams is well researched, there is no clear consensus on the best way of implementing them—specifically with respect to forming student groups. In some studies students self-select their groups, and in others they are assigned by the instructor (either randomly or with a specific grouping algorithm). Research has shown that performance and satisfaction in group learning situations improves when faculty, not students, select the groups. Furthermore, studies have demonstrated that students’ learning benefits from working in groups with diverse learning styles, abilities, gender, and race. In this study, we report on a controlled experiment conducted during a two-stage collaborative exam in an introductory physics course at Harvard University. For the group stage of the exam, half of the groups were formed by the instructor (based on balancing gender and performance on previous exams) and the other half were student selected. We compared performance on both the individual and group stage of the exam for the instructor-formed versus student-formed groups. We also surveyed students on their experiences during the group exam. We found that female students perform better on two-part collaborative exams when they are in student-formed groups. We also found that in the student-formed groups students (especially female students) felt more comfortable speaking up and felt that their groups were both “more effective and productive” and “more receptive to their ideas” than in the instructor-formed groups. This study provides important insights into best practice implementation of two-stage collaborative exams.

Recent educational policies advocate a radical revision of science curricula and pedagogy, to support interdisciplinary practices, a distinguishing feature of contemporary science. Computational modeling (CM) is a core methodology of interdisciplinary science, as such models allow intertwining of data and theoretical perspectives from multiple domains, to address complex problems such as climate change and pandemics. This integrative nature of CM could support the pedagogical transition to interdisciplinary science as well. Most approaches to introduce CM in science curricula are based on learning new practices, such as VPython programming or agent-based modeling. These approaches do not integrate CM with existing content, media, and teaching practices. To facilitate this integration, we present a more gradualist design, starting from derivation models in physics. This design was implemented as a set of teacher professional development modules, and presented to a group of physics teachers interested in introducing CM to undergraduate students. The analysis of their responses indicates that even this gradual transition to CM requires teachers to significantly revise their ideas about the nature of physics and physics learning (their personal epistemologies). We discuss how the teacher professional development modules were redesigned based on this finding.

Modeling, which is the process of constructing, testing, and refining models, is an important skill in experimental physics, and thus a learning goal of many physics laboratory classes. One promising approach to help students develop modeling skills is to incorporate multiweek student-designed projects into lab courses. In order to assess the potential benefits of these projects in enhancing students’ modeling abilities, we analyzed projects from three upper-division lab courses at different institutions. By looking at written student coursework and student interviews, we investigated which parts of the modeling process the students from each project undertook, and how this engagement in modeling differed depending on features of the projects. The projects in our dataset varied widely, showing evidence of different ways students engaged with model construction and revisions. We observed that the features of the projects, such as the goal of the project and the complexity of the required apparatus, were associated with the ways in which the students constructed models and enacted revisions. This has implications for how instructors may choose to frame and structure courses with student-designed lab projects.

There is growing interest in implementing reform-based lab courses in undergraduate physics that are student driven rather than instructor driven. In these courses, students develop and carry out experiments while simultaneously reasoning about their hypotheses, data collection procedures, collected evidence, and the relevant physics content. However, there is a limited understanding of how students reason in these types of labs. Using the theoretical framework of sensemaking, we examine qualitative observational data of undergraduates engaging in open-ended experimentation in reform-based introductory physics for life sciences labs. We examine the moment-by-moment details of students’ sensemaking by focusing on a series of inconsistencies, specifically focusing on what the inconsistencies are about and what moves students enact during sensemaking to resolve them. We explore sensemaking about conceptual and procedural inconsistencies through a narrative case study analysis of a single group whose sensemaking is largely representative of the observed data corpus. We find that students engaged in sensemaking to resolve conceptual inconsistencies by juxtaposing hypotheses and evidence and critiquing and constructing scientific explanations, sometimes evoking elements of mechanistic reasoning. Comparably, we find that students engaged in sensemaking to resolve procedural inconsistencies by proposing and testing a series of causes towards modifying experimental procedures or apparatus. Overall, we find that student sensemaking about both types of inconsistencies is generally productive, given students’ resolutions and experimental progress. Capturing detailed sensemaking about inconsistencies highlights the richness of students’ reasoning processes in this understudied learning environment that is becoming more prevalent.

Learning assistants (LAs) are peer educators who work alongside faculty to facilitate active learning activities and help students develop conceptual understanding. LAs and LA training programs are becoming increasingly prevalent in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) gateway courses in the United States, and research continues to document the positive impacts on students and LAs in LA-facilitated classrooms. While evidence accumulates regarding positive student impact, relatively less work has investigated the ways LAs themselves might also be impacted by their participation in these programs. To improve LA training and student learning in STEM, it is vital that educators better understand the ways the experiences of LAs can promote personal and professional growth as members of the STEM community. To address this gap, we explored the epistemological development of LAs who participated in an LA program (i.e., pedagogy training and classroom practice) at a large, public, teaching-focused university. LAs participated in semi-structured interviews at the beginning and end of the academic term and completed bi-weekly reflections where they described impactful events and challenges. Using qualitative coding, we operationalized Baxter Magolda’s epistemological reflection model to identify the impactful experiences that provoke epistemological development or reorientation. Our findings highlight three impactful experiences that help promote epistemological development for LAs: (i) recognizing the importance of language and listening; (ii) observing more knowledgeable others struggle with content; and (iii) providing students with the “wrong” answer to a question. We argue that these experiences can promote epistemological development in ways that help LAs become more effective in facilitating student learning and, ultimately, more thoughtful members of STEM disciplines. By working to create spaces for LAs to have these impactful experiences in training and preparation, educators can promote epistemological growth in ways that benefit both LAs and the students they serve.

The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a popular multiple-choice instrument used to measure a student’s conceptual understanding of Newtonian mechanics. Recently, a network analytic technique called module analysis has been used to identify responses to the FCI and other conceptual instruments that are preferentially selected together by students; these groups of responses are called communities. This study uses module analysis to explore the misconception structure of the FCI at five U.S. institutions with varying undergraduate populations (sample sizes of $N=9606$, 4360, 1496, 466, and 213). Students from these universities had a broad range of prior knowledge in physics and of general high school academic preparation, resulting in large differences in FCI normalized gain, pretest, and post-test scores. In the current work, modified module analysis partial was applied and communities of consistently selected responses within the FCI were identified at the five institutions studied. There was substantial similarity between the communities identified postinstruction; somewhat less similarity preinstruction. This suggests that consistently applied Newtonian misconceptions exist both before and after instruction at a wide range of institutions. The most frequently applied misconceptions were “largest force determines motion,” Newton’s third law misconceptions, and “motion implies active forces.” These misconceptions were still consistently applied even after instruction by a substantial number of students at all but the highest performing of the five institutions.

Optics is a core field in the curricula of secondary physics education. In this study, we present the development and validation of a test instrument in the field of optics, the ray optics in converging lenses concept inventory (ROC-CI). It was developed for and validated with middle school students, but can also be adapted for the use in higher levels of physics education. The ROC-CI can be used as a formative or a summative assessment of students’ conceptual understanding of image formation by converging lenses, assessing the following: (i) the overall understanding of fundamental concepts related to converging lenses, (ii) the understanding of specific concepts, and (iii) students’ propensity for difficulties within this topic. The initial ROC-CI consists of 16 multiple-choice items; however, one item was removed based on various quality checks. We validated the ROC-CI thoroughly with distractor analyses, classical test theory, item response theory, structural analyses, and analyses of students’ total scores at different measurement points as quantitative approaches, as well as student interviews and an expert survey as qualitative approaches. The quantitative analyses are mostly based on a dataset of $N=318$ middle school students who took the ROC-CI as a post-test. The student interviews were conducted with seven middle school students after they were taught the concepts of converging lenses. The expert survey included five experts who evaluated both individual items and the test as a whole. The analyses showed good to excellent results for the test instrument, corroborating the 15-item ROC-CI’s validity and its compliance with the three foci outlined above.

In a partially flipped, hybrid introductory physics course where students had a free choice between attending any lecture session in person or via video conferencing, and where recordings of the lecture sessions were made available for asynchronous viewing, a total of 16 learner attributes and their relationships were investigated. Five of these attributes reflect participation choices, while eleven attributes reflect assessment outcomes on different course components. In line with the “no significant difference phenomenon,” correlations between exam scores and participation choices were weaker than correlations with, for example, prior knowledge as evidenced by pretest scores. Overall, in terms of correlations, participation, and assessment attributes clustered together, respectively, with clicker questions being a connecting attribute between the clusters. Performance aside, we found two populations in the course, which, divided along the line of above and below average in-class attendance, exhibited other distinct behavior attributes mostly related to investment of time and effort in the course.

Laboratory courses are an important part of the undergraduate physics curriculum. During physics labs, students can engage in authentic, hands-on experimental practices, which can prepare them for graduate school, research laboratories, and jobs in industry. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spring 2020, colleges and universities across the world rapidly transitioned to teaching labs remotely. In this work, we report results from a survey of physics lab instructors on how they adapted their courses in the transition to emergency remote teaching. We identified three common themes in the instructors’ responses: (i) using a variety of simulation tools, (ii) changing learning goals of the courses to be more concept focused, and (iii) reducing group work due to equity and technological concerns. We discuss the common challenges and successes reported by instructors, which leads to themes and lessons that can impact future remote and in-person instruction.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Over the last decade, course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have been recognized as a way to improve undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education by engaging students in authentic research practices. One of these authentic practices is participating in teamwork and collaboration, which is increasingly considered to be an important component of undergraduate research experiences and laboratory classes. For example, the American Association of Physics Teachers Recommendations for the Undergraduate Physics Laboratory Curriculum suggest that one of the goals for students in physics labs should be to develop “interpersonal communication skills” through “teamwork and collaboration.” Teamwork can have tremendous benefits for students, including increased motivation, creativity, and reflection; however, it can also pose an array of new social and environmental challenges, such as differing styles of communication, levels of commitment, and understanding of concepts. It can also be difficult for lab course instructors to evaluate and assess. In this work, we study student teamwork in a large-enrollment physics CURE. The CURE was specifically designed to emphasize teamwork as a scientific practice. We use the two sources of data, the adaptive instrument for regulation of emotions questionnaire and students’ written memos to future researchers, to measure the students’ teamwork goals, challenges, self, co-, and socially shared regulations, and perceived goal attainment. We find that students overwhelmingly achieved their teamwork goals by overcoming obstacles using primarily socially shared regulatory strategies, and that the vast majority of students felt teamwork was an essential part of their research experience. We discuss implications for the design of future CUREs and lab courses and for lab instructors desiring to assess teamwork in their own courses.

Creating equitable learning environments has been an area of significant focus for physics education researchers in recent years. Here we introduce a framework that posits that grade penalty is a measure of academic self-concept and investigate if there are gender differences in grade penalties in physics courses for students majoring in physics. In order to quantify grade penalty, we define grade anomaly as the difference between a student’s grade in a course under consideration and their grade point average (GPA) in all other classes thus far. A grade anomaly lower than students expected grade based on their GPA is a grade penalty and higher than expected average grade is a grade bonus. Our framework posits that since women have traditionally been marginalized in physics, female physics majors are more likely to be negatively impacted by a grade penalty in their courses since their academic self-concept as a physics major hinges on them securing a certain grade. In the study presented here, we examine the average grade anomalies across a number of courses for female and male physics majors. We find that these students received grade penalties in almost all physics courses studied, though there were grade bonuses in a few laboratory courses. We also find that in physics courses, on average, women often had larger grade penalties than men, especially in introductory courses. We hypothesize that, because their grade penalties are often larger than men’s, women’s decisions to pursue a physics major and career may be particularly affected by grade penalties received in their various courses. Furthermore, the grade penalty measure can be easily computed by the physics programs concerned with equity.

Research on student retention in higher education (HE) physics could benefit by studying emotions in the context of engagement and learning. However, popular retention theories include only a narrow selection of emotions, creating a need to look elsewhere. In this study, we borrow the lens of an affective engagement model, the framework of an optimal learning moment, which has rarely been used in HE research so far. It defines situational engagement and three categories of learning enhancing, detracting, or accelerating emotions via twelve singular situational emotions. These twelve emotions in learning and other situations form intensive longitudinal data collected from twenty students using the experience sampling method (ESM) during their first two months of studying physics in a Finnish university. A two-level hierarchical dataset consisting of ESM measures ($N_1=440$) and student records ($N_2=20$), with gender as a background factor, are analyzed in two steps: first with hierarchical linear modeling, followed by multinomial logistic regression, giving results on both levels of the hierarchy, which is quite uncommon still. The results show how situational engagement and learning situations are separately connected to situational emotions and, further, how especially the learning enhancing emotions connect to success in courses (passing, grades) and first year student retention, surpassing the effect of course success.