Educational research maintains that, teaching science through designing technology has significant educational potential. Although the literature emphasizes that making technological designs is beneficial for students, it is stressed that studies about technological design generally focus on mental structures rather than hand skills of students…

There are many hypotheses regarding factors that may encourage female students to pursue careers in the physical sciences. Using multivariate matching methods on national data drawn from the Persistence Research in Science and Engineering (PRiSE) project ("n" = 7505), we test the following five commonly held beliefs regarding what…

The role of student interactions in learning situations is a foundation of sociocultural learning theory, and social network analysis can be used to quantify student relations. We discuss how self-reported student interactions can be viewed as processes of meaning making and use this to understand how quantitative measures that describe the…

A model of expertise in physics problem solving was tested on undergraduate science, physics, and engineering majors enrolled in an introductory-level physics course. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypothesized relationships among variables linked to expertise in physics problem solving including motivation, metacognitive planning,…

The question "how to improve the interest of students to study physics" has been discussed in the author's previous papers too. Within the framework of the project, the author prepared various new interdisciplinary projects to demonstrate how inventions in physics are used in everyday life. Now, about one year later, the author found out…

The process of conceptual change can be described as a three phase process. The first phase involves students' possession of initial naive "conceptions/misconceptions," the second phase involves students undergoing a process of "assimilation," and the third phase involves students undergoing a radical process called…

This study reports the effect of teachers' professional development in a two-year MEd program of High School Science Education, held from October 2010 until March 2012. Twelve out of the 33 teachers enrolled in the program participated in the study. The main research questions were: what are the teachers' perceptions of their own work and teaching…

Wesley College is a private, primarily undergraduate minority-serving institution located in the historic district of Dover, Delaware (DE). The College recently revised its baccalaureate biological chemistry program requirements to include a one-semester Physical Chemistry for the Life Sciences course and project-based experiential learning…

Previous research has demonstrated the efficacy of two explanation-based approaches for increasing learning in educational games. The first involves asking students to explain their answers (self-explanation) and the second involves providing correct explanations (explanatory feedback). This study (1) compared self-explanation and explanatory…

We present a new laboratory activity for teaching radioactive decay by using hydrodynamic processes as an analog and an evaluation of its efficacy in the classroom. A fluid flowing from an upper beaker into a lower beaker (shampoo in this case) behaves mathematically identically to radioactive decay, mimicking the exponential decay process,…

Many students are challenged when tasked to complete a word problem. While they may know the procedural steps to solve an equation, translating a word problem into an appropriate equation and producing a solution may often cause students to become confused or unwilling to try. This article provides a potential solution for teachers by discussing…

This paper describes the procedure of developing an instructional tool, "concept mapping" and its effectiveness in making the material meaningful to the students. In Pakistan, the traditional way of teaching science subjects at all levels at school relies heavily on memorization. The up-to-date data obtained from qualitative and…

For a little over 40 years, what we label now physics education research has been conducted. As a result, a new type of theme in the research and in physics education has emerged. Some of these themes are cognitivism, research as qualitative, learning as construction of knowledge, theoretical underpinnings that are not realist, student-centered…

It has been almost 10 years since one of the greatest frauds in the history of physics was uncovered, namely, the case of Hendrik Schon. This case provides a wonderful opportunity to discuss scientific integrity and scientific misconduct with both undergraduate and graduate science students. This article explains the scientific data at the heart…

The persistent fear of physics by learners motivated the author to take action to increase all students' interest in the subject via a new curriculum for introductory college physics that applies Greene's model of Aesthetic Education to the study of contemporary physics, utilizing symmetry as the mathematical foundation of physics as well as the…