Physical education in colleges plays an increasingly important role in cultivating high-quality innovative talent. The main factors that affect college students' approaches to learning physics remain unknown. This study examined the relationships among college engineering students' epistemic views of physics, conceptions of learning physics, and…

Measurement uncertainty is an important topic in the undergraduate laboratory curriculum. Previous research on student thinking about experimental measurement uncertainty has focused primarily on introductory-level students' procedural reasoning about data collection and interpretation. In this paper, we extended this prior work to study…

Research carried out through the last 20 years gave us undeniable evidence that to learn anything we need to be active participants, not passive observers. One of the important aspects of learning physics is constructing explanations of physical phenomena. To support and guide students toward constructing their explanations, teachers need to be…

Preservice elementary teachers enter their science methods courses with a range of prior experience with science practice. Those prior experiences likely inform much of their science pedagogy and goals. In this study, the authors examine how a cohort of preservice elementary teachers engaged in science practice as they learned content in a physics…

The creation and use of models in science is of great importance for knowledge production and communication. For example, toy models are often used as idealized explanatory models in physics education. Models can be a powerful tool for exploring phenomena in ways that facilitate learning. However, careful consideration of instruction and…

When learning about the particulate nature of matter (PNM), students tend to attribute the same properties to both particles and to the substances they compose. It has been argued that this might be explained by them categorizing the wrong ontological category. To explain the relationships between submicroscopic and macroscopic levels of matter,…

Research fields related to learning (e.g., educational technology and learning sciences) have historically focused on what questions using traditional methods (e.g., comparing different learning tools and methods). New methodologies that are grounded in learning, engagement, and motivational theories are needed to additionally address the how…

Developing a deeper understanding of scientific concepts is one of the primary goals of science education. To improve students' conceptual understanding, it is necessary to explore the major characteristics of their learning process. Informed by previous work on conceptual understanding, this study focuses on the concept of evaporation, exploring…

In this paper, we demonstrate the fruitfulness of a theoretical framework called "Commognition," developed in the context of mathematics education research, for conceptualizing and analyzing a professional development (PD) process on measurement uncertainty for secondary physics teachers. Evaluating measurement uncertainty is an…

Chemical bonding is central to explaining many phenomena. Research in chemical education and the Framework for K-12 Science Education (the "Framework") argue for new approaches to learning chemical bonding grounded in (1) using ideas of the balance of electric forces and energy minimization to explain bond formation, (2) using learning…

Achieving knowledge integration for deep learning requires students to develop well-connected knowledge structures through the central idea of a concept. However, a number of studies on student learning in momentum have revealed persistent difficulties in understanding its fundamental concept, particularly in relating net force, time, and change…

Although Ohm's law contains various possibilities in teaching and learning scientific inquiry, it is rare for students to experience an authentic inquiry. Thus, we designed an open-ended in-depth inquiry about Ohm's law and made students conduct it. To do this, we developed a laboratory activity for students following a standard method of Ohm's…

Use of online video lectures is increasingly common. However, students may struggle to self-regulate their attention and passively process the content. This study examined whether, and for whom, different types of embedded learning prompts improve student learning from video lectures. Undergraduate physics students (N = 253) watched an online,…

Small group interactions and interactions with near-peer instructors such as learning assistants serve as fertile opportunities for student learning in undergraduate active learning classrooms. To understand what students take away from these interactions, we need to understand how and what they learn during the moment of their interaction. This…

With the prominence of assessments in education, there is an increasing need to create new forms of assessment that more accurately reflect the needs of the entire student population, particularly neurodivergent learners. To address this challenge, this paper explores the potential for using eye tracking data in a game-based learning environment…