What should all students know about the physical sciences? Why should all students have a basic understanding of these ideas? An amazing number of new scientific breakthroughs have occurred in the last 20 years that impact daily lives. This article focuses on the "Next Generation Science Standards" (NGSS) disciplinary core ideas in…

We used a "knowledge in pieces" perspective on teacher learning to document undergraduates' pedagogical resources in a model-based physics course for potential teachers. We defined pedagogical resources as small, discrete ideas about teaching science that are applied appropriately or inappropriately in specific contexts. Neither…

Research on expertise suggests that a critical aspect of expert understanding is knowledge of the relations between domain principles and problem features. We investigated two instructional pathways hypothesized to facilitate students' learning of these relations when studying worked examples. The first path is through self-explaining how…

This study explored the process of physics teaching assistants' (TAs) PCK development in the context of teaching a new undergraduate introductory physics course. "Matter and Interactions" (M&I) has recently adopted a new introductory physics course that focuses on the application of a small number of fundamental physical…

Solving the position of a simple pendulum at any time is apparently one of the most simple and basic problems to solve in high school and college physics courses. However, because of this apparent simplicity, teachers and physics texts often assume that the solution is immediate without pausing to reflect on the problem formulation or verifying…

This study investigates university students' understanding of graphs in three different domains: mathematics, physics (kinematics), and contexts other than physics. Eight sets of parallel mathematics, physics, and other context questions about graphs were developed. A test consisting of these eight sets of questions (24 questions in all) was…

Physics education research (PER) is a relatively new and rapidly growing area of Ph.D. specialization. To sustain the field of PER, a steady pipeline of talented scholars needs to be developed and supported. One aspect of building this pipeline is understanding how students come to graduate and postdoctoral work in PER and what their career goals…

Stereotype threat (ST), which involves confirming a negative stereotype about one's group, is a factor thought to contribute to the gender gap in science achievement and participation. This study involved a quasi-experiment in which 312 US high school physics students were randomly assigned, via their classroom cluster, to one of three ST…

This study investigated how student characteristics predict the nature of girls' and boys' verbal interactions with their teachers in physics classes. The sample included (N = 1378) students from 81 randomly selected high-school physics classrooms in Germany and the German-speaking part of Switzerland. At the beginning of the school year, the…

Physics First is offered to ninth graders at high schools in Aurora, CO. A unique new asset of this school system is an embedded research lab called the "Innovation Hyperlab." The goal of the lab is to connect secondary school teaching to ongoing university scientific research, supporting the school district's aim to create opportunities to…

This study explored two groups of Grade 11 (age 16-17) students' conceptual understandings about aspects of particle theory before, immediately after, and 3 months after instruction with multiple representations (IMR) and instruction with verbal representations (IVR). Data sources included open-ended questionnaires, interviews, and student…

We report on the development of a life sciences curriculum, targeted to undergraduate students, which was modeled after a commercially available physics curriculum and based on aspects of how people learn. Our paper describes the collaborative development process and necessary modifications required to apply a physics pedagogical model in a life…

The authors explored how gender and socioeconomic status (SES) predicted physics achievement as mediated by metacognition and physics self-efficacy. Data were collected from 338 high school students. The model designed for exploring how gender and SES-related differences in physics achievement were explained through metacognition and physics…

The force concept in physics is known to be poorly understood by high school and university students throughout the world, with alternative conceptions being prevalent. In this study, I surveyed the conceptions regarding force of a large and varied convenience sample of South African physical sciences teachers, and sought patterns between levels…

Introductory undergraduate physics courses aim to help students develop the skills and strategies necessary to solve complex, real world problems, but many students not only leave these courses with serious gaps in their conceptual understanding, but also maintain a novice-like approach to solving problems. "Matter and Interactions"…