Textbooks play a fundamental role in teaching and learning in school science classrooms. In this paper, we investigate the presentation of the nature of the electromagnetic field in a dozen of the world's most popular introductory university physics textbooks. We analyze, from an epistemologically based teaching approach, the didactic treatment of…

We use the Survey of Thermodynamic Processes and First and Second Laws-Long (STPFaSL-Long), a research-based survey instrument with 78 items at the level of introductory physics, to investigate introductory and advanced students' difficulties with entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. We present an analysis of data from 12 different…

The galvanic cell is a typical interdisciplinary topic, which is primarily taught in chemistry but its underpinning is closely related to physics. Student learning in galvanic cell has been extensively studied in chemistry education, which has revealed a large number of misconceptions that are difficult to change through traditional instruction. A…

We investigate learning difficulties among second-year students in electromagnetism courses when they apply Ampère-Maxwell's law. Using phenomenography, we analyzed written answers from 65 undergraduate physics students to four questions on Ampère's and Ampère-Maxwell's laws. We complemented our research by interviewing 12 students. To design the…

We discuss how research on student difficulties was used as a guide to develop, validate, and evaluate a Quantum Interactive Learning Tutorial (QuILT) to help students learn how to determine the completely symmetric bosonic or completely antisymmetric fermionic wave function and be able to compare and contrast them from the case when the particles…

Instruction in quantum mechanics is becoming increasingly important as the field is not only a key part of modern physics research but is also important for emerging technologies. However, many students regard quantum mechanics as a particularly challenging subject, in part because it is considered very mathematical and abstract. One potential way…

Vector fields are a highly abstract physical concept that is often taught using visualizations. Although vector representations are particularly suitable for visualizing quantitative data, they are often confusing, especially when describing real fields such as magnetic and electric fields, as the vector arrows can overlap. The present study…

Electricity and magnetism are closely related phenomena with a well-known symmetry found in Maxwell equations. An essential part of any electricity and magnetism course includes the analysis of different field source distributions through Gauss's and Ampere's laws to compute and interpret different physical quantities, such as electric flux,…

Much of physics involves the construction and interpretation of equations. Research on physics students' understanding and application of mathematics has employed Sherin's symbolic forms or Fauconnier and Turner's conceptual blending as analytical frameworks. However, previous symbolic forms analyses have commonly treated students' in-context…

Despite its crucial importance in physics, there are not many studies focusing on student difficulties and teaching strategies related to the (1D) wave equation in the PER literature. In order to contribute to fill this gap, we conducted a study with university students which focused on specific aspects that are crucial for understanding this…

We conducted a study with introductory and upper-division physics students in a Mexican university to learn how students independently recognize the electric field's main characteristics in the electric field lines diagram and as a source or target representation in conversion processes. We used the theory of registers of semiotic representations…

Achieving knowledge integration for deep learning requires students to construct well-connected knowledge structures by understanding and applying the central ideas of a concept. However, research on student learning in work and mechanical energy reveals persistent challenges in grasping fundamental concepts, particularly in connecting the…

Literature on student ideas about circuits largely focuses on misunderstandings and difficulties, with seminal papers framing student thinking as stable, difficult to change, and connected to incorrect ontological categorizations of current as a thing rather than a process. In this paper, we analyzed 417 student responses to a conceptual question…

Video instruction has been widely studied and is generally considered as effective as live instruction for teaching scientific concepts and procedures. However, there is limited research on the effectiveness of prerecorded videos for teaching more challenging content. This study conducted a controlled experiment on over 300 high school students to…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection in Investigating and Improving Quantum Education through Research.] Instructors teaching upper-division quantum mechanics have had two primary options when it comes to textbook choice and thus curriculum sequence: starting with wave functions and the Schrödinger equation, referred to as "wave…