Values affirmation exercises have been implemented in many contexts to combat stereotype threat in students from marginalized populations; the exercises are intended to fortify students by prompting them to self-affirm their values in short writing activities. Within the physics education research community, the style of intervention was…

Students experience many difficulties learning the fundamental relationships in Newtonian mechanics, partly due to preexisting mental models that originate from their everyday lives. These preconceptions often persist even after instruction in mechanics and lead to a supposed incompatibility between physics lessons in school and personal…

The ability to solve physics problems that require multiple concepts from across the physics curriculum--"synthesis" problems--is often a goal of physics instruction. Three experiments were designed to evaluate the effectiveness of two instructional methods employing worked examples on student performance with synthesis problems; these…