An increasing number of introductory physics courses are seeking to incorporate “authentic practices,” and a large area of focus in this trend is the incorporation of computational problems into the curriculum. These problems offer students an opportunity to engage with the programming practices and numerical problem-solving methods used by physicists. Understanding how instructors approach teaching such problems is essential for improving instruction and problem design. We conducted a phenomenographic study using semistructured interviews with undergraduate learning assistants in a problem-based introductory mechanics course that incorporates several computational problems. The learning assistants’ prior involvement as students, along with their relatively fewer experiences with programming and physics compared to the faculty instructors, give them a unique perspective on teaching in the course. We present here the results of our analysis: the identification of four approaches that learning assistants make take to teaching computational problems in this course. These approaches, programming focus, learning physics via computation focus, computation as a tool focus, and shifting perceptions of learning focus, provide a lens for understanding the different ways learning assistants perceive computation, the degree to which they take up course-intended learning goals surrounding computation, the factors that may impact the approaches they take, and how we might affect their approaches through training and support.

This study examines whether including more contextual information in data analysis could improve our ability to identify the relation between students’ online learning behavior and overall performance in an introductory physics course. We created four linear regression models correlating students’ pass-fail events in a sequence of online learning modules with their normalized total course score. Each model takes into account an additional level of contextual information than the previous one, such as student learning strategy and duration of assessment attempts. Each of the latter three models is also accompanied by a visual representation of students’ interaction states on each learning module. We found that the best performing model is the one that includes the most contextual information, including instruction condition, internal condition, and learning strategy. The model shows that while most students failed on the most challenging learning module, those with normal learning behavior are more likely to obtain higher total course scores, whereas students who resorted to guessing on the assessments of subsequent modules tended to receive lower total scores. Our results suggest that considering more contextual information related to each event can be an effective method to improve the quality of learning analytics, leading to more accurate and actionable recommendations for instructors.

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.

We report the results of a survey applied to students and professionals in the area of physics in Brazil, pursuing to draw a portrait of the composition of this community in terms of the social markers of difference age, race, ethnicity, geographical origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, and disabilities. The main goal was to quantify the representativeness of different groups in the community and to detect motivations and difficulties encountered by each group throughout their studies and career. This survey was open to the members of the Brazilian Physics Society from July to September 2018. Our outcomes reveal that (i) the Brazilian physicists community is poorly diverse even in comparison with the population composition, (ii) the main obstacle to pursue the career is socioeconomic vulnerability, and (iii) harassment is high in our society, being more pronounced among women. We hope that these results will be useful to scientific and educational institutions to develop different strategies and policies to change this current situation.

We conducted a study with introductory and upper-division level physics students in a Mexican and a Spanish university to learn how students recognize the main characteristics of the electric field in three of its more widely used representations, namely, algebraic notation, vector field plot, and electric field lines, and how the students do conversions of them. The students’ abilities to recognize the three representations of the electric field and do conversions gave insight into their understanding of this concept. We used the theory of registers of semiotic representations as a framework to analyze the data. Our results showed that the direction of the conversion is an essential factor in determining the students’ success in performing conversions of electrical field representations. We found close synergy between the vector field plot and the algebraic notation of the electric field. However, we found that the conversions that involve electric field lines do not present synergy. The electric field lines representation is especially difficult for students, both as a source and as a target representation, specifically, the interpretation and representation of the magnitude of the field through the density of field lines. We recommend that teachers and researchers of electricity and magnetism be more conscious of the difficulties that some conversion tasks may present to their students. We specifically invite instructors to be attentive to how they approach the representation of electric field lines and be explicit when performing conversions that involve electric field lines.

Circular motion is embedded in many circus tricks, and is also one of the most challenging topics for both students and teachers. Previous studies have identified several misconceptions about circular motion, and especially about the forces that act upon a rotating object. A commonly used demonstration of circular motion laws by physics teachers is spinning a bucket full of water in the vertical plane further explaining why the water did not spill out when the bucket was upside down. One of the central misconceptions regarding circular motion is the existence of so-called centrifugal force: Students mistakenly believe that when an object spins in a circular path, there is real force acting on the object in the radial direction pulling it out of the path. Thus, one of the most frequently observed naïve explanations is that the gravity force mg is compensated by the centrifugal force on the top of the circular trajectory and thus, water does not spill down. In the present study we decided to change the context of the problem from a usual physics class demonstration to a relatively unusual informal environment of a circus show and investigate the spectators’ ideas regarding circular motion in this context. Thus, the goal of the present study is to examine the concepts of a heteroaged population regarding circular motion phenomenon provided in the context of a circus number as expressed in focus-group interviews following the number.

Finland is known worldwide for their strong K–12 education system and robust gender equality across their nation. However, these facts have not translated into strong representation of women in physics degree attainment and the workforce. This study seeks to understand the motivations and consideration to leave of university physics students in Finland, with a specific focus on gender. Undergraduate students’ aspiration to attend graduate school and graduate students’ aspiration for an academic career were also assessed. This study uses a survey instrument distributed to Finnish physics students at 5 of the 9 nationwide programs. The responses ($N=329$) indicate that anxiety increases a students’ consideration to leave and that women report higher anxiety and lower self-efficacy in their pursuit of a physics degree than men. Women were also more likely to report being extrinsically motivated to pursue physics than men. Positive intrinsic motivation and self-efficacy predicted the aspiration of graduate school for undergraduates, while only gender predicted interest in academic careers by men and nonacademic careers for women.

In order to investigate students’ misunderstandings of potential wells and tunneling, a conceptual knowledge test was administered to Dutch secondary school students after they were taught about quantum mechanics. A frequency analysis of responses to the multiple choice questions ($n=98$) and coding of the responses to the open-ended questions and explanations ($n=13$) shows that Dutch secondary school students experience difficulties similar to those reported for undergraduate students. The students’ underlying difficulties were analyzed using a typology of learning impediments. Results of this analysis show that students have difficulty connecting knowledge of potential wells and tunneling to their prior knowledge. Students mainly have creative and epistemological learning impediments, which cause eight incorrect synthetic models.

This paper presents the first results from draw-a-scientist tests (DASTs) over five years that were used to measure the effect of 8–10 week long astronomy clubs and week long summer camps on 3 rd–5 th grade elementary school students’ perceptions of scientists. We facilitated these DASTs prior to these clubs or camps, which provide a baseline for a student’s initial conception of scientists, and once at the end, to determine whether their conception changed, possibly as a result of their involvement. In total we analyze 89 pairs of DASTs using a numerical grading scheme designed to quantify the presence of various features in the drawn scientist and their activities. We find that there is a gender imbalance in both the pre- and postclub drawings, with only 32% and 35%, respectively, of students drawing female scientists. We also find that a third to a half of the scientists have a stereotypical appearance and/or are performing stereotypical activities. Although we find insignificant changes ($<5\%$) in most categories, we do find an 8% increase in the number of scientists that have a stereotypical appearance, which is worth following up, but a significant 12% decrease in the number of scientists who are performing stereotypical activities. In addition, we present some possible improvements to implementing DASTs and discuss other possible assessments that could provide a more direct method of gauging the effect of these astronomy clubs or camps.

Momentum is a foundational concept in physics. Although it is often taught in introductory mechanics courses, there are a limited number of studies on this topic in the literature. The results from these studies have consistently shown that students have difficulties in understanding momentum, especially the connections between net force, time, and change in momentum, which are signs of fragmented knowledge structure and poor knowledge integration. This study adopts the conceptual framework representation to model student understanding and guide the design of an assessment test on momentum. Informed by the previous work on knowledge integration, the conceptual framework maps out the key concepts and their connections within a student’s knowledge structure. Recent studies have shown that a conceptual framework can be used as a guide to create assessment items that follow different reasoning pathways, probing various misconceptions and student difficulties. In this study, an assessment of momentum was developed and tested among a large number of U.S. college freshmen and Chinese high school students. Based on testing and interview results, students’ understanding is separated into three progression levels of knowledge integration including novicelike, transitional, and expertlike. Furthermore, the comparison between the two countries’ curriculum and momentum test results indicates that an emphasis on the central idea of impulse-momentum theorem can be an essential instructional strategy to help students make the necessary connections within their knowledge structure, leading to a deeper conceptual understanding of momentum.

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.

We examined physics graduate teaching assistants’ views about introductory physics problem “types,” i.e., different ways of posing the same underlying physics problem, within the context of a semester-long teaching assistant (TA) professional development course. Here, we focus on TAs’ views about two types of broken-into-parts problems that involve the same underlying physics scenario. One of these problem types does not involve explicit calculation, while the other does. The TAs were asked to list the pros and cons of these two types of broken-into-parts problems, rank them compared to other problem types (e.g., traditional textbook problem not broken-into-parts, context-rich problem, and multiple-choice problem) with the same underlying scenario in terms of their instructional benefit and the level of challenge they might produce for their students, and describe when and how likely they would be to use these types of problems in their own classes in different instructional situations if they had complete control of teaching the class. TAs reported that they found the broken-into-parts problem type to be the most instructionally beneficial out of all the problem types because of the guidance such problems offer, and would use a broken-into-parts problem type often and in a variety of ways (e.g., homework assignments, exams, and quizzes). While providing guidance to students is an appropriate instructional approach, our findings from interviews suggest that many TAs may be motivated to assign broken-into-parts problems out of a desire to make the problem-solving process easy and/or less stressful for students, especially because they felt that introductory students may not be capable of breaking a problem into subproblems on their own. The instructional benefits of gradually removing the scaffolding support to help students develop self-reliance in solving problems appeared to be overlooked by most TAs. In particular, in written responses or in interviews, most TAs did not mention a long-term goal of helping students develop more independence in problem solving for which one may start with broken-into-parts problems and gradually transition to problems that are not broken into parts. While the study findings that provide a snapshot of TA views in the middle and at the end of a TA professional development course may only apply to graduate TAs at a similar large university, at those institutions, professional development of TAs should take into account these findings and help TAs reflect on the important role that removing scaffolding support gradually and providing adequate challenge can play in helping introductory students develop self-reliance and become independent, expertlike problem solvers.

A small group of interested upper secondary education students participated in a workshop where they created a particle-based physics engine and used the engine to implement a hanging cloth simulation and a two-dimensional heat diffusion model of their own creation. During the implementation of their models, learning opportunities present themselves in the form of opening up and exploring different dimensions of variation for the students. By varying aspects and discerning how these changes affect the program, students can construct meaning about the system. The students were video and audio recorded during the workshop and interviewed afterwards. Based on the transcripts, students use of programming was analyzed using social semiotics and variation theory of learning with a focus on the three aspects: coding, visualization, and interaction. The analysis identifies usages of programming such as a transductive link between semiotic systems, the ease of varying and iterating aspects, and the ability to enter into a loop of discovery and understanding.

We describe the development and in-class evaluation of a quantum interactive learning tutorial (QuILT) on quantum key distribution, a context which involves an exciting application of quantum mechanics. The protocol used in the QuILT described here uses single photons with nonorthogonal polarization states to generate a random shared key over a public channel for encrypting and decrypting information. The QuILT strives to help upper-level undergraduate students learn quantum mechanics using a simple two state system. It actively engages students in the learning process and helps them build links between the formalism and the conceptual aspects of quantum physics without compromising the technical content. The in-class evaluation suggests that the validated QuILT is helpful in improving students’ understanding of relevant concepts.

Writing is an integral part of the process of science. In the undergraduate physics curriculum, the most common place that students engage with scientific writing is in lab classes, typically through lab notebooks, reports, and proposals. There has not been much research on why and how we include writing in physics lab classes, and instructors may incorporate writing for a variety of reasons. Through a broader study of multiweek projects in advanced lab classes, we have developed a framework for thinking about and understanding the role of writing in lab classes. This framework defines and describes the breadth of goals for incorporating writing in lab classes, and is a tool we can use to begin to understand why, and subsequently how, we teach scientific writing in physics.

Brewe, Bruun, and Bearden first applied network analysis to understand patterns of incorrect conceptual physics reasoning in multiple-choice instruments introducing the module analysis for multiple-choice responses (MAMCR) algorithm. Wells et al. proposed an extension to the algorithm which allowed the analysis of large datasets called modified module analysis (MMA). This method analyzed the network structure of the correlation matrix of the responses to a multiple-choice instrument. Both MAMCR and MMA could only be applied to networks of incorrect responses. In this study, an extension of MMA is explored which allows the analysis of networks involving both correct and incorrect responses. The extension analyzes the network structure of the partial correlation matrix instead of the correlation matrix. The new algorithm, called MMA-P, was applied to the FCI and recovered much of the structure identified by MMA. The algorithm also identified sets of correct answers requiring similar physical reasoning reported in previous studies. Beyond groups of all correct and all incorrect responses, some groups of responses which mixed correct and incorrect responses were also identified. Some of these mixed response groups were produced when a correct response was selected for incorrect reasons; some of the groups were related to the gender unfair items previously reported for the FCI.

We introduce a template to (i) scaffold the problem solving process for students in the physics 1 course, and (ii) serve as a generic rubric for measuring how expertlike students are in their problem solving. This template is based on empirical studies of the problem solving practices of expert scientists and engineers, unlike most existing templates which are based on prescriptive, theoretical descriptions of expert problem solving and are largely based on how experts solve textbook-style problems. However, there is still some overlap with existing problem solving templates. In study 1, we investigated the validity of the template for use in introductory physics in two ways, first, by analyzing the final exam solutions from a Physics 1 course, and second, by analyzing seven think-aloud cognitive interviews as successful introductory physics students worked to solve a challenging problem. The results show that use of the elements of the template is correlated with successful problem solving, the template follows successful students’ existing problem solving processes, and explicitly using the template in solving problems does not add additional cognitive load. In study 2, analysis of final exam solutions from a different introductory physics course shows that the relationship between template use and problem solving performance depends on the type and difficulty of the problem. In this work, we also identified some consistent difficulties of unsuccessful students in solving problems which suggests some ways to better teach physics problem solving.

In an effort to examine students’ understanding about the structure of boundary conditions in upper-division courses, think-aloud interviews were conducted in the context of both quantum mechanics and electricity and magnetism. In the quantum mechanics task, students were presented with a standard potential step scenario. In the electricity and magnetism task, students were given a classical question about electromagnetic waves at the boundary of two media. The analysis of the interviews was guided by the use of a symbolic forms perspective. In this paper, we report the symbolic forms identified in students’ work and provide examples of students’ reasoning. Generally speaking, students were able to generate the correct symbolic templates while having difficulties with the underlying conceptual ideas. We also discuss instructional implications from this study.

Investigating student learning and understanding of conceptual physics is a primary research area within physics education research. Multiple quantitative methods have been employed to analyze commonly used mechanics conceptual inventories: the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) and the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE). Recently, researchers have applied network analytic techniques to explore the structure of the incorrect responses to the FCI identifying communities of incorrect responses which could be mapped on to common misconceptions. In this study, the method used to analyze the FCI, modified module analysis was applied to a large sample of FMCE pretest and post-test responses ($N_{\mathrm{pre}}=3956$, $N_{\mathrm{post}}=3719$). The communities of incorrect responses identified were consistent with the item groups described in previous works. As in the work with the FCI, the network was simplified by only retaining nodes selected by a substantial number of students. Retaining as nodes only those incorrect answer choices selected by at least 20% of the students produced communities associated with only four misconceptions. The incorrect response communities identified for men and women were substantially different, as was the change in these communities from pretest to post-test. The 20% threshold was far more restrictive than the 4% threshold applied to the FCI in the prior work that generated similar structures. Retaining nodes selected by 5% or 10% of students generated a large number of complex communities. The communities identified at the 10% threshold were generally associated with common misconceptions producing a far richer set of incorrect communities than the FCI; this may indicate that the FMCE is a superior instrument for characterizing the breadth of student misconceptions about Newtonian mechanics.

Mathematical reasoning skills are a desired outcome of many introductory physics courses, particularly calculus-based physics courses. Novices can struggle to understand the many roles signed numbers play in physics contexts, and recent evidence shows that unresolved struggle can carry over to subsequent physics courses. Positive and negative quantities are ubiquitous in physics, and the sign carries important and varied meanings. The mathematics education research literature documents the cognitive challenge of conceptualizing negative numbers as mathematical objects—both for experts, historically, and for novices as they learn. We contribute to the small but growing body of research in physics contexts that examines student reasoning about signed quantities and reasoning about the use and interpretation of signs in mathematical models. In this paper we present a framework for categorizing various meanings and interpretations of the negative sign in physics contexts, inspired by established work in algebraic contexts from the mathematics education research community. Such a framework can support innovation that can catalyze deeper mathematical conceptualizations of signed quantities in the introductory courses and beyond.