This quantitative study examined self-perceptions of multiple intelligences among gifted physics-oriented Finnish upper-secondary students (N = 164). The specific focus was on gender differences in the self-evaluated intelligence profiles. The data were gathered via an online questionnaire based on Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences. The…

Teaching assistants have a very important role in physics education as they interact with students and guide them in different contexts. A multitude of research has focused on how to prepare teaching assistants to implement high-quality, research-based teaching techniques. Video clubs, i.e., working with a group of teachers to watch and discuss…

This qualitative study used in-depth interviews to investigate how gifted Finnish upper-secondary-school physics students (N = 24) actualize their physics talent in their career choices. The data were analyzed using inductive content analysis. Half of the students had their primary career choice in natural sciences and engineering (NS&E). The…

Physics lab courses permanently undergo transformations, in recent times especially to adapt to the emergence of new digital technologies and the COVID-19 pandemic in which digital technologies facilitated distance learning. Since these transformations often occur within individual institutions, it is useful to get an overview of these…

This study reports findings from an interview study with eleven teacher educators from a physics teacher training program in Finland. They represented the four training environments that students encounter during their education, i.e. the Department of Physics, the Department of Mathematics and Science Education, the Department of General…

Despite rapid changes in education, science classrooms will remain central forums where fragmented pieces of information are brought together to construct coherent knowledge as concepts and explanatory scientific storylines. There is limited work stressing the importance of the interplay between how content is communicated through pedagogical…

We present a study on the development of Finnish first-year physics majors' attitudes towards physics, as measured by the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey, before, during, and after the period of mandatory remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic. We find that in the years before the pandemic, these attitudes did not change,…

Higher education continually seeks new approaches to support students with various learning needs. At present, Finland attempts to provide such support through accessibility and reasonable accommodation efforts, but students with learning disabilities may still encounter many barriers in their studies. One approach suggested to meet the needs of a…

This dissertation focuses on three manuscripts all related to bolstering science achievement through recommendations from the National Research Council (NRC) regarding the teaching and learning of science. The manuscripts address meeting the NRC's call to incorporate curriculum and assessment that lead to more in-depth knowledge that can be…

Physics instruction is often unable to support students' self-efficacy. The remote teaching brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has also affected learning. We surveyed an introductory quantum mechanics course for three years during a transition into the spin first approach, adapting the student-centered "prime-time learning" model and…

This study explores prospective primary school teachers' misconceptions concerning basic concepts in chemistry. The data was gathered during the years 2012-2016 among first-year primary school teachers in Finland (N = 389). The results show that every year, as many as 40%-80% of teachers share the same kinds of misconceptions as children ages 5-12…

This chapter compares two teachers' definitional practices in two Content-and-Language-Integrated-Learning (CLIL) lessons, i.e. physics and history, which are taught in English in Finland. It adopts Dalton-Puffer's (Eur J Appl Linguistics 1(2):216-253, 2013; Cognitive discourse functions: specifying an integrative interdisciplinary construct. In:…

In this article, graduated physics teachers' views about their teacher education program and professional needs are evaluated. With respect to teacher knowledge, Physical Knowledge for Teaching (PKT) framework consisting of six domains related to content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge was developed based on the framework of…

This case study examined teachers' on-the-fly formative assessment conversations, that is, how teachers collect information from students' thinking and use that information to support their learning during teacher-student interactions. Previous studies have typically analysed whole-class discussions on the level of speaking turns, and have…

In the present article, a simple model for teaching the falling motion of a bungee jumper is presented and evaluated in terms of students' learning. The model allows one to make qualitative predictions about the accelerations of bungee jumpers with different masses and cord densities. The model was taught during a 90min teaching unit to physics…