Physical Review Physics Education Research最新文献

{"title":"Editorial: Call for Papers for Focused Collection ofPhysical Review Physics Education Research: AI Tools in Physics Teaching and PER","authors":"Charles Henderson","doi":"10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020003","url":null,"abstract":"<span>DOI:</span><span>https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.19.020003</span>","PeriodicalId":54296,"journal":{"name":"Physical Review Physics Education Research","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138691472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Cross-age study on secondary school students’ views of stars","authors":"Philipp Bitzenbauer, Sarah Navarrete, Fabian Hennig, Malte S. Ubben, Joaquin M. Veith","doi":"10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020165","url":null,"abstract":"Research in astronomy education has uncovered that many learners possess limited and fragmented understanding of stars. The corresponding misconceptions manifest in various areas such as star formation, size, the relationship between stars and planets, and their position in space and have been shown to persist across different age groups and educational settings, highlighting the need for further investigation. This paper presents the findings of an empirical study that examines secondary students’ views of stars and their evolution throughout their secondary school education. We designed and evaluated an instrument for assessing students’ views of stars in five domains (stars and the solar system, formation and evolution of stars, general properties and motion of stars, (sub-)stellar objects, as well as color and brightness). The instrument creation process involved several steps, including literature-based item development, an expert survey with faculty members, and a quantitative pilot study with a sample of <math display=\"inline\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML\"><mi>N</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>390</mn></math> secondary school and college students. This process led to a final version of the instrument that exhibits good psychometric properties. We used this new instrument in a cross-age study to investigate the alignment of secondary students’ ideas about stars with scientific views across different stages of secondary education. The sample of this main study comprised a total of <math display=\"inline\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML\"><mi>N</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>366</mn></math> learners, including 148 lower (aged 13–14 years), 151 middle (aged 15–16 years), and 67 upper (aged 17–18 years) secondary school students. Our study findings reveal a progressive development of students’ perspectives on star-related topics throughout their school education: Using analyses of variance and conducting pairwise <i>post hoc</i> comparisons, we observed a statistically significant increase in the proportion of responses aligning with scientific views across all aspects of stars examined in this study, as students progressed from lower secondary to upper secondary levels. We further report on widely held views of stars among our study participants that do not align with the scientific views and discuss the implications of our findings for both educational research and practice.","PeriodicalId":54296,"journal":{"name":"Physical Review Physics Education Research","volume":"230 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138569591","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Comment on “Rubric-based holistic review represents a change from traditional graduate admissions approaches in physics”","authors":"M. B. Weissman","doi":"10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.028001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.028001","url":null,"abstract":"A recent paper evaluating a new rubric-based graduate admissions approach using generic methods tentatively suggested that its decisions differed noticeably from the previous approach in an unspecified way. Using prior knowledge that the often-stated specific goal was to open a path to increased diversity by reducing barriers to the admission of applicants with low undergraduate grade point averages and graduate record exam (GRE) scores allows simple statistical tests of changes in the distributions of the metrics. The simple tests confirm with good statistical confidence that the barrier-reduction changes were achieved. Nevertheless, the paper’s argument that the de-emphasized tests and grades are not predictive of graduate outcomes is not supported by the prior literature. On technique, although a method used in some of the analyses for dropping data points before running the machine algorithm is likely to bias those results, it helps to clarify why models of the rubric-based system were only weakly predictive.","PeriodicalId":54296,"journal":{"name":"Physical Review Physics Education Research","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138547128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Confirmatory factor analysis of two self-efficacy scales for astronomy understanding and robotic telescope use","authors":"R. Freed, D. H. McKinnon, M. T. Fitzgerald, S. Salimpour","doi":"10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020164","url":null,"abstract":"This paper presents the results of a confirmatory factor analysis on two self-efficacy scales designed to probe the self-efficacy of college-level introductory astronomy (Astro-101) students (<math display=\"inline\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML\"><mrow><mi>n</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>1</mn><mn>5</mn><mn>1</mn><mn>8</mn><mn>1</mn></mrow></math>) from 22 institutions across the United States of America and Canada. The students undertook a course based on similar curriculum materials, which involved students using robotic telescopes to support their learning of astronomical concepts covered in the “traditional” Astro-101 courses. Previous research by the authors using these self-efficacy scales within a pre-/post-test approach showed both high reliabilities and very high construct validities. However, the scale purporting to measure students’ self-efficacy in relation to their use of the astronomical instrumentation associated with online robotic telescopes was particularly skewed and required further investigation. This current study builds on the previous work and shows how a slight adjustment of the survey items presents an improved and robust scale for measuring self-efficacy.","PeriodicalId":54296,"journal":{"name":"Physical Review Physics Education Research","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138533753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Editorial: Call for Papers for Focused Collection ofPhysical Review Physics Education Research: Investigating and Improving Quantum Education through Research","authors":"Charles Henderson","doi":"10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020002","url":null,"abstract":"<span>DOI:</span><span>https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.19.020002</span>","PeriodicalId":54296,"journal":{"name":"Physical Review Physics Education Research","volume":"76 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-12-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138533754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Toward AI grading of student problem solutions in introductory physics: A feasibility study","authors":"Gerd Kortemeyer","doi":"10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020163","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020163","url":null,"abstract":"Solving problems is crucial for learning physics, and not only final solutions but also their derivations are important. Grading these derivations is labor intensive, as it generally involves human evaluation of handwritten work. AI tools have not been an alternative, since even for short answers, they needed specific training for each problem or set of problems. Extensively pretrained AI systems offer a potentially universal grading solution without this specific training. This feasibility study explores an AI-assisted workflow to grade handwritten physics derivations using MathPix and GPT-4. We were able to successfully scan handwritten solution paths and achieved an R-squared of 0.84 compared to human graders on a synthetic dataset. The proposed workflow appears promising for formative feedback, but for final evaluations, it would best be used to assist human graders.","PeriodicalId":54296,"journal":{"name":"Physical Review Physics Education Research","volume":"65 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138533759","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Collaborative physics teachers: Enhancing the use of the laboratory through action research in a community of learners","authors":"Marta Carli, Ornella Pantano","doi":"10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020162","url":null,"abstract":"This study contributes to the literature on the role of communities of learners in the professional development of physics teachers. It offers insights from the <i>Collabora—A Community of Learners on Laboratory Work</i> program, designed to enhance the use of laboratories in secondary school physics teaching. The program’s foundation rested upon two pillars: a learning community approach and action research, grounded in the findings of physics education research. Furthermore, the program was structured to encompass the core features of effective professional development as outlined in the literature (content focus, active learning opportunities, coherence with teachers’ needs, and sufficient duration). The program spanned 2 years. During the first year, teachers engaged with and discussed different types of experiments, reflected on the assessment of scientific practices, and participated in action research aimed at improving laboratory activities in their classrooms. In the second year, they focused on integrating laboratory work within teaching-learning sequences developed through a backward design process. The research questions of this study were centered on examining the role and relevance of program features, with particular emphasis on the learning community and action research components, and on investigating the changes reported by teachers as a result of participating in the program. The findings emphasize the pivotal role of the teacher community, with reciprocal training identified as the “truly developmental” element. Moreover, they corroborate the relevance of action research in fostering a sense of ownership of research-based innovations. Over the course of the program, teachers reported changes in the personal domain, in the domain of practice, and, particularly in the second year, also in the domain of student outcomes. These changes included the use of different types of experiments, a greater sense of self-efficacy in the laboratory, and an increased focus on the design and assessment of laboratory work. We studied changes through a “growth” lens, both at the group level and within a subset of individual case studies. The latter analysis highlights different possible productive pathways to teachers’ growth, supporting a view of teacher professional development as complex and multifaceted. The program structure facilitated the processes of “enactment” and “reflection” that mediated the various changes.","PeriodicalId":54296,"journal":{"name":"Physical Review Physics Education Research","volume":"62 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138533752","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Encouraging students to understand the 1D wave equation","authors":"Muhammad Aswin Rangkuti, Ricardo Karam","doi":"10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020161","url":null,"abstract":"Despite its crucial importance in physics, there are not many studies focusing on student difficulties and teaching strategies related to the (1D) wave equation in the PER literature. In order to contribute to fill this gap, we conducted a study with university students which focused on specific aspects that are crucial for understanding this equation. Our results include not only key learning difficulties and potential teaching strategies to circumvent them, but they also suggest that students can search for a deeper understanding of physics equations when prompted to do so.","PeriodicalId":54296,"journal":{"name":"Physical Review Physics Education Research","volume":"78 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138533757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Critical issues in statistical causal inference for observational physics education research","authors":"Vidushi Adlakha, Eric Kuo","doi":"10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020160","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020160","url":null,"abstract":"Recent critiques of physics education research (PER) studies have revoiced the critical issues when drawing causal inferences from observational data where no intervention is present. In response to a call for a “causal reasoning primer” in PER, this paper discusses some of the fundamental issues in statistical causal inference. In reviewing these issues, we discuss well-established causal inference methods commonly applied in other fields and discuss their application to PER. Using simulated data sets, we illustrate (i) why analysis for causal inference should control for confounders but not control for mediators and colliders and (ii) that multiple proposed causal models can fit a highly correlated dataset. Finally, we discuss how these causal inference methods can be used to represent and explain existing issues in quantitative PER. Throughout, we discuss a central issue in observational studies: A good quantitative model fit for a proposed causal model is not sufficient to support that proposed model over alternative models. To address this issue, we propose an explicit role for observational studies in PER that draw statistical causal inferences: Proposing future intervention studies and predicting their outcomes. Mirroring the way that theory can motivate experiments in physics, observational studies in PER can predict the causal effects of interventions, and future intervention studies can test those predictions directly.","PeriodicalId":54296,"journal":{"name":"Physical Review Physics Education Research","volume":"51 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138533750","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Physics lab courses under digital transformation: A trinational survey among university lab instructors about the role of new digital technologies and learning objectives","authors":"Simon Zacharias Lahme, Pascal Klein, Antti Lehtinen, Andreas Müller, Pekka Pirinen, Lucija Rončević, Ana Sušac","doi":"10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020159","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevphyseducres.19.020159","url":null,"abstract":"[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Physics lab courses permanently undergo transformations, in recent times especially to adapt to the emergence of new digital technologies and the COVID-19 pandemic in which digital technologies facilitated distance learning. Since these transformations often occur within individual institutions, it is useful to get an overview of these developments by capturing the status quo of digital technologies and the related acquisition of digital competencies in physics lab courses. Thus, we conducted a survey among physics lab instructors (<math display=\"inline\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML\"><mi>N</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>79</mn></math>) at German, Finnish, and Croatian universities. The findings reveal that lab instructors already use a variety of digital technologies and that the pandemic particularly boosted the use of smartphones and tablets, simulations, and digital tools for communication, collaboration, and organization. The participants generally showed a positive attitude toward using digital technologies in physics lab courses, especially due to their potential for experiments and students’ competence acquisition, motivational effects, and contemporaneity. Acquiring digital competencies is rated as less important than established learning objectives, however, collecting and processing data with digital tools was rated as an important competency that students should acquire. The instructors perceived open forms of labwork and particular digital technologies for specific learning objectives (e.g., microcontrollers for experimental skills) as useful for reaching their learning objectives. Our survey contributes to the reflection of what impact the emergence of digital technologies in our society and the COVID-19 pandemic had on physics lab courses and reveals first indications for the future transformation of hands-on university physics education.","PeriodicalId":54296,"journal":{"name":"Physical Review Physics Education Research","volume":"83 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138533746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}