This ethnographic cross-case study examines five teachers' year-long efforts to implement practice-based physics instruction within the unique organizational context of a no-excuses charter network. The teachers were attempting to adapt their didactic, rigid, and compliance-based instructional approach to include more opportunities for students to…

The underrepresentation of Black Americans in physics has been persistent for so long that it seems to have constrained physics educators' collective imagination when it comes to conceptualizing and pursuing equity in physics teaching and learning. Drawing on a teacher research study that foregrounds justice-centered physics teaching, this article…

When learning about scientific phenomena, students are expected to "mechanistically" explain how underlying interactions produce the observable phenomenon and "conceptually" connect the observed phenomenon to canonical scientific knowledge. This paper investigates how the integration of the complementary processes of designing…

This study examines the impact of organizational purposes and values on reforming physics instruction to align with a practice-based instructional approach, in a case of engaging in infrastructuring with a no-excuses charter network. The network's instruction was guided by organizational purposes of ensuring predictable academic success and…

We explored how arts-based practices, specifically what we define as ethnodance informs the study of science identity. We present a theoretical argument supported by an empirical illustration of how ethnodance offers Black youth with dance identities a medium to narrate evolving science identities, communicating meanings, interactions, and…

Quantum physics challenges our views of the physical world and describes phenomena that cannot be directly observed. The use of language is hence essential in the teaching of quantum physics. With a sociocultural view of learning, we investigate characteristics of preuniversity students' small-group discussions and their potential for enhancing…

Research has indicated the importance of representational competence for learning science. Issues related to the nature of students' representational competence, such as how they demonstrate representational competence across different domains of science, require investigation. In the present study, four aspects of representational competence…

Modeling is considered an important scientific practice, and modeling instruction has the potential to support conceptual change in students in physics. However, when students are not taught how to think about modeling, and how to develop and use models, the learning potential of modeling may be limited. This paper argues that the use and explicit…

Pursuing both disciplinary authenticity and personal relevance in the teaching and learning of science in school generates tensions that should be acknowledged and resolved. This paper problematizes and explores the conceptualizations of these tensions by considering personal relevance, disciplinary authenticity, and common school science as three…

Computer-based simulations are of particular interest to physics learning because they allow learners to actively manipulate graphical visualizations of complex phenomena. However, learning with simulations requires supportive elements to scaffold learners' activities. Thus, our motivation was to investigate whether direct or indirect…

Student-directed inquiry in science is an important mechanism for helping students develop a repertoire of practices that reflects the work of real scientists. But few studies consider what students "take away" from this type of instruction, i.e., how strategies developed in such curricula transfer into other contexts. Our research…

The purpose of this project was to investigate the effects of virtual versus physical manipulation using a simulation-based laboratory activity (SBL) and a microcomputer-based laboratory activity (MBL). Both the SBL and the MBL used computers to collect, graph, and analyze data. A major difference was that the MBL allowed the students to…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is widely endorsed as a desirable learning method, particularly in science. Especially in light of the method's heavy demand on resources, evidence-based practice is called for. Rigorous studies of the method's effectiveness, however, are scarce. In Study 1, college students enrolled in an elementary physics course…

This quasi-experimental and pre/posttest study was designed to examine whether fourth-grade students who engaged in collaboratively writing letters to 11th-grade students performed better on tests of conceptual understanding of a unit on force and motion than students who did not. The participants included 835 fourth-grade students and 416…

Studies of learning in school settings indicate that many students frame activities in science classes as the production of answers for the teacher or test, rather than as making new sense of the natural world. A case study of an episode from a class taught by the first author demonstrates what productive and unproductive student framing can look…