Textbooks play a fundamental role in teaching and learning in school science classrooms. In this paper, we investigate the presentation of the nature of the electromagnetic field in a dozen of the world's most popular introductory university physics textbooks. We analyze, from an epistemologically based teaching approach, the didactic treatment of…

Inquiring about students' learning and their difficulties understanding the concepts and models of physics is a familiar challenge in physics education research. Researchers have developed various methodologies, such as phenomenography, to address it. Phenomenography is an empirical approach to determining how people experience and understand…

We conducted a study with introductory and upper-division physics students in a Mexican university to learn how students independently recognize the electric field's main characteristics in the electric field lines diagram and as a source or target representation in conversion processes. We used the theory of registers of semiotic representations…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Curriculum Development: Theory into Design.] We argue that teaching learning sequence (TLS) design needs to be further developed through the explicit articulation of methodology, which comprises the theoretical commitments regarding research and how those give rise to methods for design,…

We conducted a study with introductory and upper-division level physics students in a Mexican and a Spanish university to learn how students recognize the main characteristics of the electric field in three of its more widely used representations, namely, algebraic notation, vector field plot, and electric field lines, and how the students do…

In this work we present the application of design based research (DBR) methodology to conduct a systematic iterative study of the design and implementation of a teaching-learning sequence (TLS) on emf (electromotive force). This work is the final part of a broader study that started with the analysis of students' difficulties with emf in the…

In this work, we explore how undergraduate students use classical field theory when describing physical phenomena in the context of introductory electromagnetism. We have extracted five key characteristics of the electric and magnetic field from a historical analysis of the topic. These characteristics informed the creation of a questionnaire…

In this paper we put forward a proposal for the design and evaluation of teaching and learning sequences in upper secondary school and university. We will connect our proposal with relevant contributions on the design of teaching sequences, ground it on the design-based research methodology, and discuss how teaching and learning sequences designed…

Our study sets out to identify the difficulties that high school students, teachers, and university students encounter when trying to explain atomic spectra. To do so, we identify the key concepts that any quantum model for the emission and absorption of electromagnetic radiation must include to account for the gas spectra and we then design two…

We have investigated whether and how a categorization of responses to questions on linear distance-time graphs, based on a study of Irish students enrolled in an algebra-based course, could be adopted and adapted to responses from students enrolled in calculus-based physics courses at universities in Flanders, Belgium (KU Leuven) and the Basque…

In traditional teaching, the fundamental concepts of electromagnetic induction are usually quickly analyzed, spending most of the time solving problems in a more or less rote manner. However, physics education research has shown that the fundamental concepts of the electromagnetic induction theory are barely understood by students. This article…

We examine the pedagogical suitability of introducing a teaching sequence for the concept of electrical capacitance within the context of charging a body. This short sequence targets first year university students and was designed following students' common conceptions on this topic. The evaluation is made by comparing the results with a control…