Describes teachers' experiences in teaching a course for which a visit to help students use their physics in a real, working context with accompanying report is a compulsory component. Reports that teachers are enthusiastic about the value of visits as part of their teaching program and makes some suggestions for maximizing their effectiveness.…

Describes taking laboratory experiments, modifying them to include aspects of peer instruction and collaborative learning, and using pre- and post-tests to measure student learning gains in two of these labs. Data indicates that this modification substantially increases student learning-it increases the average student learning gain from pre- to…

The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a multiple-choice test designed to monitor students' understanding of force and related kinematics. Reviews the development of the FCI, outlines its structure, and reviews findings from its implementation. Makes the case for the FCI as a powerful tool for improving both learning and teaching of mechanics.…

The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is a multiple-choice test designed to monitor students' understanding of force and related kinematics. Outlines how the FCI was used to evaluate student learning following a newly developed approach to teaching mechanics in a Finnish upper secondary school. Offers an example of the benefits that can follow from…

Textbooks rarely emphasize how controversial some physics theories were at the time of their proposal. Makes the case that useful classroom debate can be generated by considering the controversy that arose over models of the atom such as Rutherford's and Bohr's, and ideas about fractional charges put forward by Millikan and arising from quark…

Describes an activity that can be used to help middle and secondary school students develop more informed understandings of some important aspects of the nature of science in the context of teaching Rutherford's experiments and atomic structure. (Author/MM)

The Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) is a new instrument designed to measure student beliefs about physics and about learning physics. This instrument extends previous work by probing additional aspects of student beliefs and by using wording suitable for students in a wide variety of physics courses. The CLASS has been…

In a recent study we showed that physics students' problem-solving performance can depend strongly on problem representation, and that giving students a choice of problem representation can have a significant impact on their performance [ P. B. Kohl and N. D. Finklestein, Phys. Rev. ST. Phys. Educ. Res. 1, 010104 (2005) ] In this paper, we…

Decades of education research have shown that students can simultaneously possess alternate knowledge frameworks and that the development and use of such knowledge are context dependent. As a result of extensive qualitative research, standardized multiple-choice tests such as Force Concept Inventory and Force-Motion Concept Evaluation tests…

This study investigates the effect of computer animation on assessment and the conditions under which animation may improve or hinder assessment of conceptual understanding in physics. An instrument was developed by replacing static pictures and descriptions of motion with computer animations on the Force Concept Inventory, a commonly used pencil…

The Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment (BEMA), developed by Chabay and Sherwood, was designed to assess student understanding of basic electricity and magnetism concepts covered in college-level calculus-based introductory physics courses. To evaluate the reliability and discriminatory power of this assessment tool, we performed…

Recent papers document that student problem-solving competence varies (often strongly) with representational format, and that there are significant differences between the effects that traditional and reform-based instructional environments have on these competences [Kohl and Finkelstein, Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 1, 010104 (2005); Kohl and…

Previous studies have demonstrated that analogies can promote student learning in physics and can be productively taught to students to support their learning, under certain conditions. We build on these studies to explore the use of analogy by students in a large introductory college physics course. In the first large-scale study of its kind, we…

The reliability and validity of professionally written multiple-choice exams have been extensively studied for exams such as the SAT, graduate record examination, and the force concept inventory. Much of the success of these multiple-choice exams is attributed to the careful construction of each question, as well as each response. In this study,…

The paper introduces a set of formative assessment tasks and rubrics that were developed for use in an introductory physics instruction to help students acquire and self-assess various scientific process abilities. We will describe the rubrics, tasks, and the student outcomes in courses where the tasks and rubrics were used. (Contains 49…