We have given a group of 56 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) seniors who took mechanics as freshmen a written test similar to the final exam they took in their freshman course as well as the Mechanics Baseline Test (MBT) and the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS). Students in majors unrelated to physics scored 60%…

We use visualization to find patterns in educational data. We represent student scores from high-stakes exams as flow vectors in fluids, define two types of streamlines and trajectories, and show that differences between streamlines and trajectories are due to regression to the mean. This issue is significant because it determines how quickly…

Developing a sense of community among students is one of the three pillars of an overall reform effort to increase participation in physics, and the sciences more broadly, at Florida International University. The emergence of a research and learning community, embedded within a course reform effort, has contributed to increased recruitment and…

Recent publications have documented positive attitudinal shifts on the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) among students enrolled in courses with an explicit epistemological focus. We now report positive attitudinal shifts in classes using the "Physics by Inquiry" ("PbI") curriculum, which has only an implicit focus on…

We have investigated the impact of using multimedia learning modules (MLM) on the learning of students enrolled in introductory physics courses at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. One hundred fifty-nine students were randomly registered in two sections of an introductory mechanics course, one of which featured the MLMs. Both…

This study explored how researchers' views about the form of students' epistemologies influence how the researchers develop and refine surveys and how they interpret survey results. After running standard statistical analyses on 505 physics students' responses to the Turkish version of the Maryland Physics Expectations-II survey, probing students'…

Physics students can encounter difficulties in physics problem solving as a result of failing to use knowledge that they have but do not perceive as relevant or appropriate. In previous work we have demonstrated that some of these difficulties may be epistemological. Students may limit the kinds of knowledge that they use. For example, they may…

We have found that non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) majors taking either a conceptual physics or astronomy course at two regional comprehensive institutions score significantly lower preinstruction on the Lawson's Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning (LCTSR) in comparison to national average STEM majors. Based on…

During a one-semester-long research project with high school students, we deployed and gauged efficiency of two different reform teaching methods: reading, presenting, and questioning (RPQ) and experimenting and discussion (ED). In this paper we report on changes in students' attitudes and beliefs about physics and learning physics. We used the…

Numerical problem solving in classical mechanics in university physics education offers a learning situation where students have many possibilities of control and creativity. In this study, expertlike beliefs about physics and learning physics together with prior knowledge were the most important predictors of the quality of performance of a task…

A perceived difficulty is associated with physics problem solving from a learner's viewpoint, arising out of a multitude of reasons. In this paper, we have examined the microstructure of students' thought processes during physics problem solving by combining the analysis of responses to multiple-choice questions and semistructured student…

In this paper we discuss a study on the approaches to modeling of students of the 4-year elementary school teacher program at the University of Palermo, Italy. The answers to a specially designed questionnaire are analyzed on the basis of an "a priori" analysis made using a general scheme of reference on the epistemology of mathematics and…

We discuss common difficulties in upper-division electricity and magnetism (E&M) in the areas of Gauss's law, vector calculus, and electric potential using both quantitative and qualitative evidence. We also show that many of these topical difficulties may be tied to student difficulties with mathematics. At the junior level, some students…

Educators and policy makers have advocated for reform of undergraduate biology education, calling for greater integration of mathematics and physics in the biology curriculum. While these calls reflect the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of biology research, crossing disciplinary boundaries in the classroom carries epistemological challenges…

Recent research results have failed to support the conventionally held belief that students learn physics best from hands-on experiences with physical equipment. Rather, studies have found that students who perform similar experiments with computer simulations perform as well or better on measures of conceptual understanding than their peers who…