The impact of lecture instruction on student conceptual understanding in physics has been the subject of research for several decades. Most studies have reported disappointingly small improvements in student performance on conceptual questions despite direct instruction on the relevant topics. These results have spurred a number of attempts to…

Background: Misconceptions are major obstacles to learning physics, and the concepts of heat and temperature are some of the common misconceptions that are encountered in daily life. Therefore, it is important to develop valid and reliable tools to determine students' misconceptions about basic thermodynamics concepts. Three-tier tests are…

New physics bachelor's entering the workforce receive some of the highest starting salaries of any undergraduate majors. Each fall, the Statistical Research Center conducts its "Survey of Enrollments and Degrees," which asks physics and astronomy departments to provide information concerning the numbers of students they have enrolled and…

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of an instructional intervention on enhancement the pre-service science teachers' (PSTs) science process skills (SPSs) and to identify problems in using SPSs through Laboratory Applications in Science Education-I course (LASE-I). One group pretest-posttest pre-experimental design was employed. An…

"Culture," a set of principles that trace and familiarize human beings within their existential realities, may provide an invisible lens through which reality could be discerned. Critically explored in this study is how culture- and language-sensitive curriculum materials in physics improve Pangasinan learners' attitude toward science.…

This case study provides an explanatory account on the underachievement of three gifted students studying physics in a Taiwanese university. The students' physics underachievement was diagnosed by Sato's student-problem analysis chart. These students were invited to complete a questionnaire and a follow-up interview in order to (1) understand the…

This study aims to determine the effect on the achievement, motivation and self-sufficiency of students of the flipped classroom approach adapted to Keller's ARCS (Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction) motivation model and applied to a physics course. The study involved 66 students divided into two classes of a physics course. The…

Using data from the 2011 (Chinese) Student Academic Achievement Evaluation, we examined whether within-school socioeconomic gaps in science achievement exist across science subjects, how consistent they are, and whether there are relationships between school average science achievement and within-school socioeconomic gaps in science achievement.…

This paper reports on the design and enactment of an instructional strategy aimed to support students in constructing scientific explanations. Informed by the philosophy of science and linguistic studies of science, a new instructional framework called premise--reasoning--outcome (PRO) was conceptualized, developed, and tested over two years in…

This article explores how students' aspirations to study mathematics or physics in post-16 education are associated with their perceptions of their education, their motivations, and the support they feel they received. The analysis is based on the responses of around 10,000 students in England in Year 8 (age 12-13) and then in Year 10 (age 14-15).…

Computational experiment approach considers models as the fundamental instructional units of Inquiry Based Science and Mathematics Education (IBSE) and STEM Education, where the model take the place of the "classical" experimental set-up and simulation replaces the experiment. Argumentation in IBSE and STEM education is related to the…

This article discusses how modern technology, such as electronic response systems, PeerWise system, data collection and analysis tools, computer simulations, and modeling software can be used in physics methods courses to promote teacher-candidates' professional competencies and their positive attitudes about mathematics and science education. We…

The purpose of this study was to address Advanced Placement (AP)® policy-related questions from administrators at the University System of Georgia (USG) using current AP Exam records and student course performance at four institutions. Specifically, comparisons of sequent or subsequent course grades were made between AP and non-AP students. This…

Kepler's laws of planetary motion are acknowledged as highly significant to the construction of universal gravitation. This paper demonstrates different ways to derive the law of equal areas for the Earth by general geometrical and trigonometric methods, which are much simpler than the original derivation depicted by Kepler. The established law of…

Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) is discussed at the level of an advanced course of statistical thermodynamics, clarifying some formal and physical aspects that are usually not covered by the standard pedagogical literature. The non-conventional approach adopted starts by showing that the continuum limit, in certain cases, cancels out the crucial…