The object of this study is to determine the conceptual understanding that prospective Science teachers have relating "de Broglie: Matter waves" and to investigate the effect of the instruction performed, on the conceptual understanding. This study was performed at a state university located in the western part of Turkey, with the…

Purpose: This study explored the relationship of robotics activity with the development of conceptual understanding skills among secondary school students. Method: Forty-four sixteen-year-old Form 4 (Year 10) students in a fully government-aided school who have access to functioning LEGO-Mindstorms sets during physics lessons participated in the…

Female African Americans comprise an underrepresented group in physics-focused careers. Between 2002 and 2012 African-American women comprised approximately 1% of graduating physics majors in the United States. It appears that at some point in their educational careers, many female African-American students stop considering the field of physics as…

Practical independent research projects (IRPs) are a feature of school science in a number of countries. To assess the impact of IRPs on students, a systematic review of the literature was undertaken. Thirty-nine papers met the review inclusion criteria, reporting on work from twelve countries. The review indicates that IRPs are often associated…

Federal legislation specifies equitable access to education for all students at all levels of education, including postsecondary. To explore how well the physics education research (PER) community is currently serving students who inherently vary in needs, abilities, and interests, four research-based curricula (Tutorials in Introductory Physics,…

Large gender gaps in performance on questions involving projectile motion have been observed at high school and university level, even amongst high-achieving students. This gap is particularly problematic because projectile motion is typically one of the first topics formally taught in physics, and this may give girls an inappropriately negative…

PeerWise is an online application where students are encouraged to generate a bank of multiple choice questions for their classmates to answer. After answering a question, students can provide feedback to the question author about the quality of the question and the question author can respond to this. Student use of, and attitudes to, this online…

We present an educational approach to the phenomenon of phosphorescent emission. The approach is based on a stochastic toy model, in which electron states are represented by rows of squares on a cardboard table, and coins on the squares switch from one row to the other based on the roll of two dice. The discussion of different mechanisms, giving…

One focus of 21st century science education is teaching students authentic disciplinary practices. Scientific argumentation is one such practice, and evidence suggests it is not only a key skill, but also a facilitator of high-level comprehension. Science teachers need assistance teaching and incorporating argumentation into their work. In this…

In the wake of increasing evidence that students' positive attitudes towards science particularly in chemistry and physics change strikingly as they move up in school, this study explores student perception of intrinsic and extrinsic factors that make them feel cognitive load in learning physics, chemistry and biology resulting in difficulty to…

Pearson sought to explore whether the use of Mastering Physics, an online tutorial system used in higher education introductory physics courses, is related to students' results in exams and external standardized tests. This Research Report presents findings from two research studies we conducted with Penn State University, a school known for…

Critical thinking skills are one of the 21st century skills that are effectively trained by using the OR-IPA and Problem Based Learning (PBL) Model, therefore this research aims to compare the effectiveness of both. Research design used True Experiment with Randomized Subject Control-group Pre-test and Post-test with 94 pre-service physics…

A thrown basketball, a kicked football, an elastically launched catapult payload, and a free-falling solid fuel or pressurized gas-propelled rocket all have one thing in common. They are all projectiles familiar to elementary students. A projectile is an object thrown with an initial velocity and then allowed to move without thrust along its…

A simple, and popular, demonstration of the greenhouse effect involves a higher temperature being observed in a container with an elevated concentration of CO[subscript 2] inside than in a container with just air enclosed, when subject to direct light. The CO[subscript 2] absorbs outgoing thermal radiation and causes the air inside the container…

Stability is often an important consideration in both static and dynamic systems. While introductory students soon grasp the balance of forces required for constant velocity motion, it generally takes longer for them to reliably identify the various torques involved in producing rotational equilibrium. Accelerating systems have the additional…