[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] In recent years, physics instructional labs have been under considerable research and development. However, there seems to be no shared understanding of how the assessment of instructional labs should be arranged to best serve students'…

Most educational literature on conceptual change concerns the process by which introductory students acquire scientific knowledge. However, with modern developments in science and technology, the social significance of learning successive theories is steadily increasing, thus opening new areas of interest to discipline-based education research,…

For both physicists who teach students in university and physics educators, how physics should be taught is a vital question. This study reviewed the trends of research in the field of physics education to identify the status of physics education research and help researchers in future studies. 2,959 articles were collected from the American…

Multiple external representations (MERs) are central to the practice and learning of science, mathematics and engineering, as the phenomena and entities investigated and controlled in these domains are often not available for perception and action. MERs therefore play a twofold constitutive role in reasoning in these domains. Firstly, MERs stand…

In this article, we draw on previous reports from physics, science education, and women's studies to propose a more nuanced treatment of gender in physics education research (PER). A growing body of PER examines gender differences in participation, performance, and attitudes toward physics. We have three critiques of this work: (i) it does not…

This article presents the results of an analysis of three Slovenian textbooks for high school physics, from the point of view of simplifications and idealizations in the field of mechanics. In modeling of physical systems, making simplifications and idealizations is important, since one ignores minor effects and focuses on the most important…

Discussion of the development of intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) using expert systems and hypertext focuses on the Physics Tutor, a prototype ITS built with off-the-shelf software to test the utility, practicality, and generalizability of the ITS concept. Expert models and student models are explained. (Contains 27 references.) (LRW)

Introduces a new framework of mental health counseling based on quantum physics. The framework stresses systemic thinking and intervention, interdependence, and the importance of adopting a novel perspective about time, space, reality, and change. This framework has the potential of modifying mental health counseling practice and training. Offers…

The purpose of this study was to determine the best-fitting structural equation model between the freshmen's physics achievement and selected affective characteristics related to physics. These characteristics are students' situational interest in physics, personal interest in physics, aspiring extra activities related to physics, importance of…

Describes effects which produce the semidiurnal tidal bulges, using elementary methods, without reference to fictitious forces and without recourse to a potential. (Author/HM)

Describes shortcomings of computer science/engineering education and explains a new focus on informatics. Highlights include simulation, visualization, algorithmization, design of information processing models, parallel computing, a history of informatics, informatics versus physics and mathematics, and implications for education. (51 references)…

One of the purposes of this study was to examine the differences between knowledge of pre-service physics teachers who experienced model-based teaching in pre-service education and those who did not. Moreover, it was aimed to determine pre-service physics teachers' perceptions of modelling. Posttest-only control group experimental design was used…