Studying the factors that influence the quality of physics Ph.D. students’ doctoral experiences, especially those that motivate them to stay or leave their programs, is critical for providing them with more holistic and equitable support. Prior literature on doctoral attrition has found that students with clear research interests who establish an advisor-advisee relationship early in their graduate careers are most likely to persist. However, these trends have not been investigated in the context of physics, and the underlying reasons for why these characteristics are associated with leaving remain unstudied. Using semistructured interviews with 40 first and second year physics Ph.D. students, we construct a model describing the characteristic pathways that physics Ph.D. students take while evaluating the interest congruence of prospective research groups. We show how access to undergraduate research and other formative experiences helped some students narrow their interests and look for research groups before arriving at graduate school. In turn, these students reported fewer difficulties finding a group than students whose search for an advisor took place during the first year of their Ph.D. Finally, we identify two characteristic types of students at a higher risk of leaving their programs: students who enter graduate school with broad interests and struggle to find a group and students who join a research group early based on research interest alone and subsequently encounter issues with a negative mentoring relationship. This work serves as a major step toward creating a comprehensive model of how Ph.D. students find a research group and opens the door for future work to investigate how factors such as group culture and working environment impact the search process.

The communities of practice (COP) framework describes learning as a process of navigating one’s position of membership within a community of professionals pursuing a set of common goals using established practices. As students navigate their membership within a community like a physics research group, they develop a mental model of the community of practice and use this model to guide their future career decisions. Drawing has been shown to illustrate students’ perspectives and experiences, offering important benefits as a source of qualitative information. In this proof-of-concept paper, we explore how a drawing survey can be used to identify elements of a student’s COP model in the context of a research group. We describe the development and validation of this drawing survey using the response process evaluation method. This method establishes the degree to which students interpret survey prompts as intended. We then review a sample of seven student drawings made in response to the survey to investigate the degree to which the survey generates sufficient data to examine a student’s COP model. Finally, we demonstrate a use case examining $N=23$ drawings that allow us to identify patterns and possible differences in responses from different student groups (physics majors and biology majors). We then reflect on this use of a drawing survey by highlighting important aspects of the process and discussing limitations.

Physics education research (PER) is a global endeavor, with a wealth of work performed at a variety of institutions worldwide. However, results from research into undergraduate physics laboratory courses are often difficult to compare due to the broad variations in courses. We report here how we developed and validated a survey to classify these courses, as well as compare and contrast them. This will be useful in two key endeavors: comparisons between PER studies and providing useful data for individual instructors hoping to improve their courses. While we are still in the process of collecting sufficient data to create a full taxonomy of laboratory courses, we present here details of the survey creation itself, including its face, construct, and content validation, as well as a first look at the data collected, which includes a broad landscape of lab courses in 41 countries. We used both quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze the data collected. Some of these results include similarities between courses, such as students often using preconstructed apparatuses and instructors hoping for students to learn technical skills. We also find differences in courses, such as in the number and types of goals of the course, as well as the activities students participate in. Thus, this survey and its results can provide information relevant to both researchers and instructors.

In this study, we have explored the effectiveness of two instructional approaches in the context of the motion of objects falling at terminal speed in the presence of air resistance. We ground these instructional approaches in dual-process theories of reasoning, which assert that human cognition relies on two thinking processes. Dual-process theories suggest multiple possible avenues by which instruction might impact student reasoning. In this paper, we compare two possible instructional approaches: one designed to reinforce the normative approach (improving the outputs of the intuitive process) and another that guides students to reflect on and analyze their initial ideas (supporting the analytic process). The results suggest that for students who have already demonstrated a minimum level of requisite knowledge, instruction that supports analysis of their likely intuitive mental model leads to greater learning benefits in the short term than instruction that focuses solely on providing practice with the normative mindware. These results have implications for the design of instructional materials and help to demonstrate how dual-process theories can be leveraged to explain the success of existing research-based materials.

Despite knowing physics and astronomy doctoral programs are laden with identity-based inequities, they continue to push minoritized students to the margins. This qualitative social network analysis of 100 women and/or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and more ($\mathrm{LGBT}+$) physics and astronomy Ph.D.’s explores how minoritized physics and astronomy students utilize social networks to navigate departmental exclusion. Our findings indicate that many of the participants’ identities were often unacknowledged or negatively addressed within their graduate education, with only four participants reporting a positive or favorable experience during this period of their career. Direct support from peers, faculty, and identity-based affinity groups was necessary for participants to navigate their educations. This study demonstrated that generic best practices often cannot fully support the diverse range of persons who come to physics and that identity-neutral values in physics further isolate students by insinuating that their own minoritized experiences are not valid.

Students often struggle in the transition from high school to college. One component of this struggle is adjusting study habits to navigate new academic expectations. Another is establishing new relationships in college that can support their emotional well-being and academic success. We administered surveys consisting primarily of open-ended questions to students taking an introductory physics course in order to gain insight into students’ study habits and support structures and how they change from high school to college. We find that many students learn that they need to dedicate more time outside of class to studying in order to succeed in college. Many students trying to improve their performance report practicing more, but our results suggest that more practice alone is not sufficient; rather, students were able to increase their performance and satisfaction in the course by engaging more deeply with the material. Regarding support structures, we find that in high school, students find their teachers highly supportive and accessible, but they are less likely to approach their college professors for help. Meanwhile, many students find peers to be an important source of support in college as the amount of support they receive from their families diminishes with distance from home. Gaining a better understanding of students’ study habits, support structures, and how they conceptualize them can help us design course structures and messaging that can more effectively help students develop strong learning strategies and social networks.

Student learning in simple electric circuits has been an important area in physics education research. This study builds off a previous investigation that applied the conceptual framework model to examine knowledge integration in student learning of simple electric circuits and developed a multiple-choice concept test for assessing knowledge integration in simple electric circuits. In this study, a conceptual-framework-based teaching intervention was developed and implemented in a controlled study with high school students in China to evaluate the effectiveness of the new instruction. Using the instrument developed in the previous study, a pretest, a post-test, and a delayed post-test were conducted with both groups of students. The delayed post-test was included to further evaluate knowledge retention as evidence of knowledge integration. The results suggest that the conceptual-framework-based teaching intervention was effective in promoting knowledge integration compared to the existing instruction.

In this exploratory study, we examined students’ perceptions of inclusion in a calculus-based, introductory physics 1 course for science and engineering majors. This course, offered at a large R1 institution in the United States, was conducted remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Via a survey given at the end of the semester, students rated their course inclusion and provided open-text explanations for their ratings. On average, students rated the course as moderately inclusive. Using inductive qualitative content analysis, six categories emerged: academic, identity, lack of understanding, nonspecific, other, and remote learning. The top three categories were academic (41%), nonspecific (33%), and remote learning (18%). The remote learning category included phrases containing remote learning, Zoom, or COVID-19, along with a second idea explaining the student’s level of inclusion, leading to remote learning subcategories. These subcategories were similar to the other primary categories and the academic subcategories. Many students cited academic reasons for their inclusivity scores, including course structure, teaching practices, instructor-student interaction, student-student interaction, and overall course environment. Importantly, many of these factors are within the instructor’s influence. Chi-square tests indicated that students perceiving high inclusion emphasized academic factors, while those feeling low inclusion focused on the remote learning aspect of the course. Overall, our findings suggest that instructors can significantly influence students’ perceptions of inclusion through various teaching strategies, interactions between instructors and peers, and a welcoming environment. These insights contribute to the ongoing discussion about creating inclusive classrooms by incorporating student perspectives.

In introductory physics laboratory instruction, students often expect to confirm or demonstrate textbook physics concepts. This expectation is largely undesirable: labs that emphasize confirmation of textbook physics concepts are generally unsuccessful at teaching those concepts and even in contexts that do not emphasize confirmation, such expectations can lead to students disregarding or manipulating their data in order to obtain the expected result. In other words, when students expect their lab activities to confirm a known result, they may relinquish epistemic agency and violate disciplinary practices. We present a contrasting case where, we claim, confirmatory expectations can actually support productive disciplinary engagement. In this case study, we analyze the complex dynamics of students’ epistemological framing in a lab where students’ confirmatory expectations support and even generate epistemic agency and disciplinary practices, including developing original ideas, measures, and apparatuses to apply to the material world.

We use the Survey of Thermodynamic Processes and First and Second Laws-Long (STPFaSL-Long), a research-based survey instrument with 78 items at the level of introductory physics, to investigate introductory and advanced students’ difficulties with entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. We present an analysis of data from 12 different introductory and advanced physics classes at four different higher education public institutions in the United States in which the survey was administered in person to more than 1000 students. We find that a widespread unproductive tendency for introductory students to associate the properties of entropy with those of energy leads to many errors based on an idea of “conservation of entropy,” in which entropy increases are always balanced by equal entropy decreases. For many of the more advanced students (calculus based and upper level), we detect a tendency to expect entropy increases even in processes in which the entropy does not change. We observed a widespread failure to correctly apply the relationship $\mathrm{\Delta }S=Q_{\text{reversible}}/T$, either by using it for irreversible processes to which it does not apply or by applying it incorrectly or completely neglecting it in reversible processes to which it does apply. We also noted that many introductory students are simply not aware that total entropy must increase in any “spontaneous” heat transfer process. Students at all levels were very frequently found to be confused that while net entropy ($\mathrm{system}+\text{reservoir}$) in reversible isothermal processes does not change, the entropy of the working substance itself does indeed increase or decrease depending on whether the process is an expansion or compression. Our findings are broadly consistent with prior research findings in this area, expanding upon them and revealing previously unreported aspects of students’ thinking. Moreover, our results reflect several new problem contexts in addition to those reported in prior research, and our sample population includes large numbers of both introductory and advanced students. Our detailed findings related to common student difficulties with entropy and the second law of thermodynamics before and after traditional instruction in college physics courses can potentially help instructors of these courses improve student understanding of these concepts. These findings can also be valuable for developing effective research-based curricula and pedagogies to reduce student difficulties and help students develop a solid grasp of these fundamental thermodynamic concepts.

To address the issue of gender disparity in participation in the physics state matriculation exam, a novel school visit program was designed. The program was facilitated by undergraduate university students of physics and related courses who visited schools providing lower secondary education and delivered a single-session workshop including hands-on demonstrations of physics principles, presentations about famous female scientists, information on physics-related careers, and the importance of adopting a growth mindset. In this paper, we present a detailed description of the principles underlying the workshop’s design and its final outline. Participants’ responses to a pre-post questionnaire are analyzed to assess the immediate effects of the workshop, particularly as regards changes in their opinions about physics and students’ intention to study it for their state matriculation exam. Female and male responses are analyzed separately to establish differences in the intervention’s effect between the two genders. Results show an increase among female students with positive perceptions of their physics knowledge and familiarity with physics role models. Our attempt to boost confidence, enjoyment, and perceptions of the relevance of physics proved challenging but yielded some positive results. Strikingly, girls reported positive change in their ability to imagine themselves as physicists and their intention to study physics for their matriculation exam. The intervention was more successful among younger girls. Results obtained from boys were positive but to a lesser extent. The study demonstrates an encouraging and strong positive impact of a uniquely designed, single-session intervention, especially on adolescent girls, and contributes to research on the effectiveness of gender equality-oriented science outreach interventions.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection in Investigating and Improving Quantum Education through Research.] Quantum information science and engineering (QISE) is a rapidly developing field that leverages the skills of experts from many disciplines to utilize the potential of quantum systems in a variety of applications. It requires talent from a wide variety of traditional fields, including physics, engineering, chemistry, and computer science, to name a few. To prepare students for such opportunities, it is important to give them a strong foundation in the basics of QISE, in which quantum computing plays a central role. In this study, we discuss the development, validation, and evaluation of a Quantum Interactive Learning Tutorial, on the basics and applications of quantum computing. These include an overview of key quantum mechanical concepts relevant to quantum computation (including ways a quantum computer is different from a classical computer), properties of single- and multiqubit systems, and the basics of single-qubit quantum gates. The tutorial uses guided inquiry-based teaching-learning sequences. Its development and validation involved conducting cognitive task analysis from both expert and student perspectives and using common student difficulties as a guide. For example, before engaging with the tutorial, after traditional lecture-based instruction, one reasoning primitive that was common in student responses is that a major difference between an $N$-bit classical and $N$-qubit quantum computer is that various things associated with a number $N$ for a classical computer should be replaced with the number $2^N$ for a quantum computer (e.g., $2^N$ qubits must be initialized and $2^N$ bits of information are obtained as the output of the computation on the quantum computer). This type of reasoning primitive also led many students to incorrectly think that there are only $N$ distinctly different states available when computation takes place on a classical computer. Research suggests that this type of reasoning primitive has its origins in students learning that quantum computers can provide exponential advantage for certain problems, e.g., Shor’s algorithm for factoring products of large prime numbers, and that the quantum state during the computation can be in a superposition of $2^N$ linearly independent states. The inquiry-based learning sequences in the tutorial provide scaffolding support to help students develop a functional understanding. The final version of the validated tutorial was implemented in two distinct courses offered by the physics department with slightly different student populations and broader course goals. Students’ understanding was evaluated after traditional lecture-based instruction on the requisite concepts and again after engaging with the tutorial. We analyze and discuss their improvement in performance on concepts covered in the tutorial.

Developing a deeper understanding of scientific concepts is one of the primary goals of science education. To improve students’ conceptual understanding, it is necessary to explore the major characteristics of their learning process. Informed by previous work on conceptual understanding, this study focuses on the concept of evaporation, exploring the level division of students’ conceptual understanding of evaporation and the development of corresponding test questions. The level-based conceptual understanding assessment was tested on 721 seventh-grade Chinese students before and after the evaporation lesson. The results of quantitative and qualitative analyses indicated that the students’ conceptual understanding of evaporation could be divided into three progression levels. Students with a low level of understanding only mechanically remembered the definition of evaporation and could identify evaporation phenomena in their daily lives based on memorized examples. Students with an intermediate level of understanding grasped not only the definition of evaporation but also the factors affecting the evaporation rate. Students with a high level of understanding understood the microscopic nature of evaporation and could explain how these three factors affect the evaporation rate from a microscopic perspective. This study also provides further evidence of the value of grasping the nature of concepts in conceptual understanding.

Physics graduate studies are substantial efforts on the part of individual students, departments, and institutions of higher education. Understanding the factors that lead to student success and attrition is crucial for improving these programs. One factor that has recently started to be investigated is the broadly defined students’ experiences related to support structures. The Aspects of Student Experience Scale (ASES), a Likert-style survey, was developed by researchers to do just that. In this study, we leverage the network approach for Likert-style surveys (NALS) methodology to provide a unique interpretation of responses to the ASES instrument for well-defined demographic groups. We confirm the validity of our findings by studying the stability of the NALS themes and investigating how they are expressed within demographic-based networks. We find that for all four themes in the original ASES study, certain thematic trends capturing students’ experiences vary across the demographic-based networks in meaningful ways. We also reveal that for some demographic groups, there is an interesting interplay between, and mixing of, the original themes. Finally, our study showcases how NALS can be applied to other Likert-style datasets.

Concepts and practices surrounding measurement uncertainty are vital knowledge for physicists and are often emphasized in undergraduate physics laboratory courses. We have previously developed a research-based assessment instrument—the Survey of Physics Reasoning on Uncertainty Concepts in Experiments (SPRUCE)—to examine student proficiency with measurement uncertainty along a variety of axes, including sources of uncertainty, handling of uncertainty, and distributions and repeated measurements. We present here initial results from the assessment representing over 1500 students from 20 institutions. We analyze students’ performance pre- and postinstruction in lab courses and examine how instruction impacts students with different majors and gender. We find that students typically excel in certain areas, such as reporting the mean of a distribution as their result, while they struggle in other areas, such as comparing measurements with uncertainty and correctly propagating errors using formulas. Additionally, we find that the importance that an instructor places in certain areas of measurement uncertainty is uncorrelated with student performance in those areas.

Although there has been extensive research on students’ understanding of the particulate nature of matter (PNM), there is still a lack of research on contexts that can be used to teach this challenging topic. In a previous design-based research study, the authors developed a teaching-learning sequence (TLS) on the PNM in the context of crystal structures based on 40 student interviews using the method of probing acceptance. Data suggested that salt and snow crystals form an effective context for learning the concept of emergence and therefore gaining a better understanding of the PNM. To test whether the TLS also promotes students’ use of the PNM in a realistic classroom setting, a proof of principle study was conducted. In six eighth-grade classes in Vienna, students’ use of the PNM was assessed with a pretest before they were taught the TLS during four lessons. After the intervention, students were given a post-test. Open-ended questions were coded using evaluative qualitative content analysis so that quantitative analysis could be applied. T-tests comparing the means of students’ scores on both tests show significant improvements in students’ use of the PNM in the post-test. The context of crystal structures seems to be helpful to students, as most of them use the PNM when asked about crystal formation. In addition, in the post-test, students more often accepted the idea of empty space between particles and associated particle motion with temperature. However, when asked about phase changes, most students remained in a continuous conception of matter.

A major goal of physics education is to develop strong problem-solving skills for students. To become expert problem solvers, students must have opportunities to deliberately practice those skills. In this work, we adopt a previously described definition of problem solving that consists of a set of 29 decisions made by expert scientists. We quantified the amount of practice undergraduate physics students get at making each decision by coding the decisions required in assignments from introductory, intermediate, and advanced physics courses at a prestigious university. A research-focused capstone course was the only example that offered substantial practice at a large range of decisions. Problems assigned in the traditional coursework required only a few decisions and routinely reduced potential opportunities for students to make other decisions. In addition, we modified traditional physics coursework to offer more decision-making practice. We observed that this increased the number of decisions students actually made in solving the problems. This work suggests that to better prepare undergraduates for solving problems in the real world, we must offer more opportunities for students to make and act on problem-solving decisions.

One expected outcome of physics instruction is for students to be capable of relating physical concepts to multiple mathematical representations. In quantum mechanics (QM), students are asked to work across multiple symbolic notations, including some they have not previously encountered. To investigate student understanding of the relationships between expressions used in these various notations, a survey was developed and distributed to students at six different institutions. All of the courses studied were structured as “spins-first,” in which the course begins with spin-$1/2$ systems and Dirac notation before transitioning to include continuous systems and wave function notation. Network analysis techniques such as community detection methods were used to investigate conceptual connections between commonly used expressions in upper-division QM courses. Our findings suggest that, for spins-first students, Dirac bras and kets share a stronger identity with vectorlike concepts than are associated with quantum state or wave function concepts. This work represents a novel way of using well-developed network analysis techniques and suggests such techniques could be used for other purposes as well.