The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is one of the research-based assessments established by the physics education research community to measure students' understanding of Newtonian mechanics. Former works have often recorded the notion of gendered mean FCI scores favoring male students notably in the North American (NA) based studies. Nevertheless,…

In physics education research, instructors and researchers often use research-based assessments (RBAs) to assess students' skills and knowledge. In this paper, we support the development of a mechanics cognitive diagnostic to test and implement effective and equitable pedagogies for physics instruction. Adaptive assessments using cognitive…

Exploring students' physics conceptions, science engagement and misconceptions in physics together with their association to certain variables (gender, educational background, and program of study) are essential in improving physics teaching and learning. However, few studies have been conducted to explore these three measures and almost none…

The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a popular multiple-choice instrument used to measure a student's conceptual understanding of Newtonian mechanics. Recently, a network analytic technique called module analysis has been used to identify responses to the FCI and other conceptual instruments that are preferentially selected together by students;…

Generative AI technologies such as large language models show novel potential to enhance educational research. For example, generative large language models were shown to be capable of solving quantitative reasoning tasks in physics and concept tests such as the Force Concept Inventory (FCI). Given the importance of such concept inventories for…

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…

In physics education, a number of studies have developed assessments of teachers' knowledge of student understanding (KSU) of specific physics concepts with modified versions of existing concept inventories, in which teachers were asked to predict the popular incorrect answers from students. The results provide useful but indirect information to…

We aim to graphically analyze the depth of conceptual understanding behind the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) responses of students, focusing on three questions (questions 1, 15, and 28). In our study, we created and implemented subquestions to clarify and quantify the students' reasoning steps in reaching their responses to the original FCI…

This study investigates the performance of GPT-4, an advanced AI model developed by OpenAI, on the force concept inventory (FCI) to evaluate its accuracy, reasoning patterns, and the occurrence of false positives and false negatives. GPT-4 was tasked with answering the FCI questions across multiple sessions. Key findings include GPT-4's…

Enrollment in high school physics across the United States of America is notably lower than in other scientific disciplines. Given that physics serves as a prerequisite for admission into many STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) degree programs, the lack of completion of this course at the high school level can significantly…

Module analysis for multiple-choice responses (MAMCR) was applied to a large sample of Force Concept Inventory (FCI) pretest and post-test responses (N[subscript pre] = 4509 and N[subscript post] = 4716) to replicate the results of the original MAMCR study and to understand the origins of the gender differences reported in a previous study of this…

In this study, we evaluate the validity of question 29 (Q.29) in the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), which requires an understanding of atmospheric pressure. At least in some Japanese physics classes, the rate of the correct answer to Q.29 is reduced between the pretest and post-test. To examine this deterioration of a student's response, we…

This study aims to reconstruct Grade 11 students' misconceptions about force through the Conceptual Change Model (CCM) making use of Predict, Discuss, Explain, Observe, Discuss, Explore, Explain (PDEODEE) tasks. This study was conducted using a mixedmethod approach. The participants in this study were 65 students (33 students in the experiment…

Concept inventories are widely used in physics education research, yet numerous studies show that concept inventories measure dramatically different learning gains in different demographic groups. Prior studies show that the performance gaps between demographic groups are already present in their preinstruction responses, suggesting that the…

Novel technology has been applied to improve students' learning abilities in different disciplines. The research in this field is still finding suitable methodologies, tools, and evaluation mechanisms to devise learning frameworks with high impact on students' performance. This article describes an instructional method to perform Newtonian physics…