Women currently outnumber men in obtaining undergraduate degrees but are underrepresented within STEM fields. However, women's representation varies by STEM field, and even further by STEM subfield. One field that has held a persistent low representation of women is physics. This paper seeks to uncover the truth behind an anecdotal claim that the…

In response to the need for a scalable, institutionally supported model of educational change, the Science Education Initiative (SEI) was created as an experiment in transforming course materials and faculty practices at two institutions--University of Colorado Boulder (CU) and University of British Columbia. We find that this departmentally…

We have examined the teaching practices of faculty members who adopted research-based instructional strategies (RBIS) as part of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI) at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Of the 70 that adopted such strategies with the support of the CWSEI program, only one subsequently stopped using these…

Students' ability to effectively study for an exam, or to manage their time during an exam, is related to their metacognitive capacity. Prior research has demonstrated the effective use of metacognitive strategies during learning and retrieval is related to content expertise. Students also make judgments of their own learning and of problem…

Physics education research has shown that students tend to struggle when trying to use mathematics in a meaningful way in physics (e.g., mathematizing a physical situation or making sense of equations). Concerning the possible reasons for these difficulties, little attention has been paid to the way mathematics is treated in physics instruction.…

Technology has been widely involved in science research. Researchers are now applying it to science education in an attempt to bring students' science activities closer to authentic science activities. The present study synthesizes the research to discuss the development of technology-enhanced laboratories and how technology may contribute to…

The widely held constructivist view of learning advocates student engagement via interactivity. Within the physics education research community, several specific interactive strategies have been developed to enhance conceptual understanding. One such strategy, the Interactive Lecture Demonstration (ILD) is designed for large lecture classes and,…

In higher education, instructors' choices of both curricular material and pedagogy are determined by their beliefs about learning and teaching, the values of their profession, and perceived external constraints. Dissemination of research-based educational reforms is based on assumptions about that mental structure. This study reports the initial…

We investigate the development of expert identities through the use of the sociocultural perspective of learning as participating in a community of practice. An ethnographic case study of biophysics graduate students focuses on the experiences the students have in their research group meetings. The analysis illustrates how the communities of…

As part of an ongoing investigation of students' learning in first semester upper-division quantum mechanics, we needed a high-quality conceptual assessment instrument for comparing outcomes of different curricular approaches. The process of developing such a tool started with converting a preliminary version of a 14-item open-ended quantum…

Ideally, instructors and their institutions would have a shared set of metrics by which they determine teaching effectiveness. And, ideally, these metrics would overlap with research findings on measuring teaching effectiveness. Unfortunately, the current situation at most institutions is far from this ideal. As part of a larger interview study,…

The role of autonomy in the student experience in a large-enrollment undergraduate introductory physics course was studied from a self-determination theory perspective. A correlational study investigated whether certain aspects of the student experience correlated with how autonomy supportive (versus controlling) students perceived their…

The physics instruction at UC Davis for life science majors takes place in a long-standing reformed large-enrollment physics course in which the discussion or laboratory instructors (primarily graduate student teaching assistants) implement the interactive-engagement (IE) elements of the course. Because so many different instructors participate in…

Since it was first published 30 years ago, the seminal paper of Chi "et al." on expert and novice categorization of introductory problems led to a plethora of follow-up studies within and outside of the area of physics [Cogn. Sci. 5 121 (1981)]. These studies frequently encompass "card-sorting" exercises whereby the…

During the fall of 2008 a web survey, designed to collect information about pedagogical knowledge and practices, was completed by a representative sample of 722 physics faculty across the United States (50.3% response rate). This paper presents partial results to describe how 20 potential predictor variables correlate with faculty knowledge about…