Physical Review Physics Education Research

More practice with limiting-case analysis helps physics students build both the confidence and skill to make sense of mathematical expressions.

Students in a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience reported that collaboration, relevance, and engaging in authentic science as key outcomes.

A survey of STEM faculty reveals that the adoption of generative AI is driven not by institutional initiatives, but by an instructor’s “AI pedagogical orientation”—their underlying beliefs about how AI impacts disciplinary thinking and learning.

Moving beyond formal coursework, entry into the quantum workforce relies heavily on experiential learning, translating prior skills to new contexts, and building professional networks.

A new hybrid learning environment pairs a digital simulator with sensor-equipped physical gears, giving introductory physics students a distinct advantage in grasping complex multi-gear transmission ratios.

When students leave physics exam problems blank, assigning a grade of zero may unintentionally exacerbate equity gaps; this retrospective study shows that uncompleted test item rates vary significantly by students’ race/ethnicity and first-generation status.

A new study evaluating nearly 1,000 handwritten physics exam solutions reveals that while out-of-the-box text embeddings can cluster similar responses, they rely too heavily on surface features to be used for automated grading.

High school students’ willingness to use generative AI for physics learning depends not only on how easy and useful they find the technology, but heavily relies on their subject-specific confidence, values, and perceived costs regarding physics itself.

Using in-depth, task-based think-aloud interviews and 3D materials, researchers uncover the specific, often hidden alternative mental models high school students use to explain the Sun’s apparent motion.

Through think-aloud interviews, this study explores how students learn quantum computing, identifying three key cognitive resources they activate and occasionally misapply when reasoning about the CNOT gate.

A comprehensive cross-cohort study reveals that most students’ interest in physics is driven by relatable contexts rather than the content itself, offering educators a clear framework to design more engaging lessons.

By introducing a unified “Encoding-Evolution-Readout-Estimation” schema, this study demonstrates how to successfully bridge classical and quantum concepts to cultivate cross-disciplinary measurement literacy in physics and engineering students.

An evaluation of introductory physics courses utilizing SCALE-UP, ISLE, and Tutorials finds no clear relationship between an instructor’s fidelity of implementation—measured via classroom observation networks—and their students’ conceptual learning gains.

Interviews with physicists teaching a master’s program reveal a framework for the math-physics interplay, highlighting how mathematical conflicts can drive scientific discovery.

A field study of ninth-grade physics students shows that interactive AI chatbots and tiered support significantly reduce perceived cognitive load compared to traditional textbook explanations.