Symbols are a cornerstone of the written language of physics and mathematics but inconsistencies in their use pose a challenge to students. This article reports on interviews held with first-year undergraduate physics students, focused on their early experiences with symbols in university physics. Students reported being confused by the symbolic…

When the thermal expansion of water is discussed in school or university lessons, functional relationships are often inferred without considering measurement uncertainties. Moreover, in some learning materials, the goal of experimentation and the experimental setup do not match. This creates the wrong picture of scientific practice. In this…

Justifications play a central role in argumentation, which is a core topic in school science education. This paper contributes to this field of research by presenting two studies in which we assess students' justifications for supporting or rejecting hypotheses in the physics lab based on self-collected, anomalous experimental data, which are…

This study investigated the effect of the metacognitive instruction in which students' epistemic cognitions were explicitly addressed, on tenth-grade students' conceptual understandings regarding force and motion. The participants of the study included 107 (49 female, 58 male) tenth-grade students at two public high schools. A quasi-experimental…

Although the promotion of students' language proficiency is an objective of all school subjects, many physics teachers self-evidently expect their students to apply sophisticated language repertoires. We assume that this expectation affects how physics teachers assess students' texts in a classroom assessment. More precisely, we suppose that…

Physics lab instructors were forced to adapt their courses in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigate the impact these changes had on student views towards experimental physics as measured by the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey for Experimental Physics (E-CLASS). Analysis of the responses from over 1600 students in both…

Lewis structures are a very important, foundational concept in chemistry. Students usually acquire this knowledge in General Chemistry and need to review it in preparation for Organic Chemistry. However, many students find the task of drawing Lewis structures to be challenging, and not all instructors can budget enough time in class to review this…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the self-efficacy levels of pre-service science teachers who participated in a workshop about physical laboratory implementations supported by digital simulations and also to determine their views on digital simulations. For this purpose, a 6-week workshop was designed based on a digital simulation…

The experiment that we present in this paper explores the teaching of Galilean motion principles observed in different reference frames, in an astronomical context. All grade 10 students in a French high school (the lycée Condorcet, Val de Marne) participated in two successive teaching-learning sessions, designed within the theoretical framework…

Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) simulations are argued to support students' learning of complex scientific phenomena via the use of realistic graphics and interactions that students can hardly experience in everyday life. However, the integration of immersive VR simulations in science classrooms introduces new challenges, whilst there is a lack of…

Students at upper secondary and college level in many countries are introduced to quantum physics (QP) in a mostly mathless course. Research shows that addressing epistemological and philosophical aspects would be beneficial for novice students' conceptual understanding. However, physics teachers seldom address these nature of science (NOS)…

This paper presents a thorough method for studying the interference of water waves. The study aimed: (a) to demonstrate the interaction of two coherent waves, which creates interference patterns, and (b) to analyse the interference patterns. Three main tools were employed: a simplified ripple tank to experiment, a smartphone camera to record the…

A Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) tool is proposed in this manuscript; which consists of an interactive, simple and low-cost computer based simulation and game, with the aim of easing the teaching/learning process regarding the physics concept of projectile motion. The novelty of this proposal relies on the use of a…

Many undergraduate and graduate physics students participate in some form of public engagement throughout the course of their studies, often through groups supported by physics departments and universities. These informal teaching and learning programs can offer unique opportunities for both participants and facilitators to interact in a way that…

When our school implemented AP Physics 1, I wanted to include a project that would extend over time, use more advanced data analysis, and teach students about handling experimental error. Using a donated 5-inch Newtonian telescope and an entry-level digital camera, the students gathered data from digital images of the four Galilean moons, Io,…