Doctoral qualifying exams are considered essential in assessing a student’s readiness for research and advanced studies. Despite their significant role in many physics programs, questions have been raised about their format, execution, and relevance. Our research investigates perceptions held by faculty members regarding the graduate doctoral examination (GDE), a written qualifying exam in Auburn University’s physics department doctoral program. We used a combination of semistructured interviews and a survey to probe their viewpoints about the purpose and necessity of written qualifying exams, their role in student preparation for these exams, and the efficacy of these exams in measuring students’ comprehensive knowledge and potential for success in physics. Despite the general consensus on the necessity of the GDE, faculty members expressed doubts about its ability to accurately predict students’ future research success and its alignment with other graduate program elements such as coursework. Proposed modifications ranged from an emphasis on oral assessments and research presentations to a complete overhaul of the examination structure. Despite these suggestions for change, the lack of agreement on a specific alternative underscores the complexity of executing substantial modifications to the GDE. Our study contributes to the ongoing dialogue on optimizing doctoral qualifying exams to better serve students and academic institutions.

Efforts to build the workforce in support of the second quantum revolution are growing, including the creation of education programs that will prepare students for jobs in this area. We surveyed 186 undergraduate students with majors across the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) disciplines and followed up with group interviews to understand their perspectives. The project was designed to understand what these STEM students know about quantum and quantum career opportunities and their level of interest in pursuing a career related to quantum. We found that most of the students know very little about quantum. Nevertheless, except for students in the life sciences, there was an interest in quantum careers. Across STEM majors, women were less likely to express interest in quantum careers than men, but this difference disappeared when we examined only physical and computer science majors. Of the few students who had knowledge of quantum concepts, most learned about this topic from online media, especially online videos. Some students reported learning about quantum in high school classes, where it was taught as an extension beyond the usual topics of the course. The undergraduate STEM students in our study identified multiple ways they would like to learn more about quantum, including short videos, seminars, courses, certificates, and degree programs.

In this paper, we present the results of an investigation into the effects of engaging with robotic telescopes during an Astronomy 101 (Astro101) course in the United States and Canada on the self-efficacy of students. Using an astronomy self-efficacy survey that measures both astronomy personal self-efficacy and instrumental self-efficacy, the authors probed their covariance with the respondents’ experience of an Astro101 course that uses robotic telescopes to collect astronomical data. Strong effects on both self-efficacy scales were seen over the period of a semester utilizing a scalable educational design using robotic telescopes. After participation in the course, the results show that the gender gap in self-efficacy between self-identified men and women is largely reduced to statistically insignificant differences compared to the initial large significant difference.

Joining a research group is one of the most important events on a graduate student’s path to becoming an independent physics researcher and earning a Ph.D. However, graduate students’ perspectives on the experience of finding a research group are not well documented in the literature. Understanding these perspectives is crucial for evaluating whether departments are providing students with adequate support while they search for a research group, and how difficulties during this process contribute to attrition. Semistructured interviews with $N=20$ first and second year physics Ph.D. students reveal that incoming graduate students see joining a research group as a significant decision, and recognize that it may impact whether they will be able to complete the program. We found that students who struggled to find a group felt isolated and worried about falling behind their peers, whereas students who were able to immerse themselves in a positive group environment reported increased sense of belonging in their programs. The process of finding a research group often held differential importance for students identifying as women and nonbinary, who at times reported having to deprioritize their preferred research topic in order to be part of a more inclusive working environment. Although incoming graduate students characterized joining a research group as a significant decision, they often felt unprepared to make it. Moreover, they perceived an overall lack of guidance and structure from their departments, and characterized coursework as a barrier to searching for a group. Our findings suggest that providing students with better support during their group search process could help improve retention, particularly for traditionally underrepresented students, and improve students’ overall satisfaction in their graduate programs.

Over the years, there have been various calls to increase and better represent astronomy in curricula. This is motivated by views within the astronomy and astronomy education communities that the awe, wonder, and interdisciplinary nature of astronomy has the potential to engage students in STEM across disciplines. Reviews of curricula have shown that astronomy topics are represented in most mandated curricula around the world and although there is a homogeneity of astronomy topics in most mandated curricula, this representation has its limitations. By using the Australian National Curriculum, the USA-based Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and the Swedish National Curriculum as examples, this study unpacks ideas around “How much astronomy is enough?”, the mismatches between astronomy topics in curricula and what constitutes astronomical literacy within the context of the Big Ideas in Astronomy document. The results identify that there is a significant gap at the galactic and extragalactic scales when considering the typical progression of astronomy topics when considering the conceptual, spatial, and temporal scales of the topics. Specifically, topics in curricula jump from tangible concepts within the student’s immediate and Solar System spatial scales in primary school to cosmological spatial scales in upper high school, without reference to spatial and conceptual connecting topics at galactic scales. Potential sample curriculum statements drawn from the Big Ideas are presented as a suggested curriculum inclusion. This curricula gap is identified as a potential source of a similar gap in education research in these topics at these levels, which in turn perpetuates the problem by there being a lack of research-based evidence for inclusion in the curriculum.

Peer Instruction gives practice in the abstract language of physics, addresses common misconceptions among students, and is more effective than traditional lecturing. However, it is not clear what makes Peer Instruction effective nor how we might improve the method. An emerging perspective is that what makes Peer Instruction effective is how it stimulates certain cognitive processes. Research also indicates that providing rules for discussion may improve the effect of peer instruction. Hence, we wanted to answer two research questions in this study: (i) What cognitive learning processes occur during peer discussions? (ii) How do students follow discussion rules? To answer our research questions, we recorded and thematically analyzed peer discussions during Peer Instruction in an introductory physics course. The most prevalent cognitive process during peer discussions was decoding the problem. The most prevalent type of explanation was explanations with physics concepts, which usually led the students to an incorrect answer. The next most prevalent type of explanation was explanation with physics models, which usually led the students to the correct answer. The students also explained with reference to their experience or examples—intuitive or analogical explanations—and it usually added little to the conversation, was wrong, or created confusion. Some discussion rules had limited impact, prompting suggestions for rule improvements to optimize Peer Instruction. Our work contributes to the literature on Peer Instruction with a cognitively based description of the learning processes and how we might further improve and ensure the effectiveness of Peer Instruction.

Students’ beliefs about the extent to which meaningful others, including their peers, recognize them as a strong science student are correlated with their persistence in science courses and careers. Yet, prior work has found a gender bias in peer recognition, in which student nominations of strong peers disproportionately favor men over women, in some instructional science contexts. Researchers have hypothesized that such a gender bias diminishes over time, as determined by students’ academic year: studies have found a gender bias in peer recognition in science courses aimed at first-year students, but not in science courses aimed at beyond first-year students. This hypothesis that patterns of peer recognition change over time, however, has yet to be tested with longitudinal data—previous studies only examine snapshots of different students in different science courses. In this study, we isolate the effect of time on peer recognition by analyzing student nominations of strong peers across a two-semester introductory physics course sequence, containing the same set of students and the same instructor in both semesters, at a mostly women institution. Using a combination of social network analysis and qualitative methods, we find that while many students receive similar levels of peer recognition over time, the four most highly nominated students—the recognition celebrities—exhibit some change between semesters even in this highly controlled setting. Furthermore, we observe that these changes in the celebrities track closely with changes in student outspokenness and that being outspoken is likely more important for gaining recognition than earning a high grade in the class. These findings lend support to prior work’s hypothesis that peer recognition changes over time, but also challenge the generalizability of previous results (i.e., that patterns of recognition are related to students’ academic year). Instead, peer recognition seems highly sensitive to variables such as individual students’ participation and, therefore, may be course specific. We provide recommendations for both when and how instructors may intervene on peer recognition based on our results.

Leaders, policymakers, and researchers have called attention to the need to improve critical aspects of physics programs, from teaching and pedagogy to making physics more diverse and equitable. As such programmatic changes are challenging and require a second-order change to be effective, many physics faculty responsible for carrying them out are not equipped with the necessary experience and support to do so. This can result in a significant waste of resources and time. Moreover, while there is a robust body of literature in higher education focusing on institutional and cultural change, there is a limited understanding of the baseline of the culture of physics programs (where physics programs are starting from), a critical aspect that shapes the change effort. Dr. David Craig and Dr. Joel Corbo with the support of the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers developed the Departmental Action Leadership Institutes (DALIs) to meet the needs of the physics community by supporting physics faculty to effectively design and implement departmental change focusing on areas needing improvement. In this research project, we developed case studies of five DALI-active physics programs from two DALI cohorts. We use a cultural dynamics lens to document facets of the dominant culture around how physics faculty approach and pursue change work. We see evidence of DALI participants’ growing awareness of taken-for-granted assumptions about educational change processes and assessment practices within their departmental cultures and coming to recognize and value alternative ways of collaborating and enacting change in their local contexts. We found that physics faculty typically approach change work in a rushed and ad hoc way ignoring the use of formal evidence. In particular, we found that any data collection efforts are the primary responsibility of a single person, rarely becoming the focus of joint attention. Whenever data did receive joint attention, it was approached in a cursory way without meaningfully informing collective change efforts. This study lays the foundation to explore critical aspects of the dominant physics culture that may constrain enacting particular forms of programmatic change. In future work, we document the cultural shifts made by these DALI-active departments around change work.

Driven in large part by the National Quantum Initiative Act of 2018, quantum information science (QIS) coursework and degree programs are rapidly spreading across U.S. institutions. Yet prior work suggests that access to quantum workforce education is unequally distributed, disproportionately benefiting students at private research-focused institutions whose student bodies are unrepresentative of U.S. higher education as a whole. We use regression analysis to analyze the distribution of QIS coursework across 456 institutions of higher learning as of Fall 2022, identifying statistically significant disparities across institutions in particular along the axes of institution classification, funding, and geographic distribution suggesting today’s QIS education programs are largely failing to reach low-income and rural students. We also conduct a brief analysis of the distribution of emerging dedicated QIS degree programs, discovering much the same trends. We conclude with a discussion of implications for educators, policymakers, and education researchers including specific policy recommendations to direct investments in QIS education to schools serving low-income and rural students, leverage existing grassroots diversity and inclusion initiatives that have arisen within the quantum community, and update and modernize procedures for collecting QIS educational data to better track these trends.

This study aimed (i) to investigate how epistemic cognition in physics and metacognition, together with three dimensions of physics identity framework—recognition, physics self-efficacy, and interest—predicted the overall physics identity of Turkish high school students and also (ii) to investigate gender differences in study constructs. A sample of 1197 high school students participated in the study. The collected data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The analysis results indicated that the model fitted the data well, further motivating intervention studies to test the causal relations proposed in the model. The results showed that recognition and interest directly predicted physics identity and mediated the relation of physics self-efficacy to it. Metacognition and epistemic cognition predicted physics identity through physics self-efficacy. The study also observed significant direct and indirect relations among metacognition, epistemic cognition, self-efficacy, recognition, and interest. Furthermore, gender differences were found in the current study. While no gender difference was observed in metacognition and epistemic cognition in physics, male students scored higher than female students in physics identity, self-efficacy, recognition, and interest. However, the mediation analysis further indicated that gender differences in physics self-efficacy might explain gender differences in physics identity, recognition, and interest. The results of this study could motivate future interventions testing the effect of metacognitive and epistemic activities on both physics self-efficacy and identity, and also, the interventions testing whether practices that reduce the gender gap in physics self-efficacy will help eliminate the gender gap in physics identity, recognition, and interest.

Data comparison problems are used in teaching and science education research that focuses on students’ ability to compare datasets and their conceptual understanding of measurement uncertainties. However, the evaluation of students’ decisions in these problems can pose a problem: e.g., students making a correct decision for the wrong reasons. Three previous studies, that share the same context and data comparison problem but where participants had increasing conceptual knowledge of measurement uncertainties, are revisited. The comparison shows a troublesome result: increasing conceptual knowledge does not lead to better decision making in the data comparison problem. In this research, we have looked into this apparent discrepancy by comparing and reanalyzing the data from these three studies. We have analyzed students’ justifications by coding them based on the compared quantity and the deciding criterion, giving a highly detailed insight into what they do when comparing the datasets. The results show clear differences in the quality of the justifications across the studies and by combining the results with the decisions, we could successfully identify four cases of correct and incorrect decisions for right or wrong reasons. This analysis showed a high prevalence of correct decisions for wrong reasons in two of the studies, resolving the discrepancy in the initial comparison of these studies. The implication of our analysis is that simply asking students to make a decision in data comparison problems is not a suitable probe to gauge their ability to compare datasets or their conceptual understanding of measurement uncertainties and a probe like this should always be complemented by an analysis of the justification.

Computational thinking in physics has many different forms, definitions, and implementations depending on the level of physics or the institution it is presented in. To better integrate computational thinking in introductory physics, we need to understand what physicists find important about computational thinking in introductory physics. We present a qualitative analysis of 26 interviews asking academic ($N\_a=18$) and industrial ($N\_i=8$) physicists about the teaching and learning of computational thinking in introductory physics courses. These interviews are part of a long-term project toward developing an assessment protocol for computational thinking in introductory physics. We find that academic and industrial physicists value students’ ability to read code and that python (or vpython) and spreadsheets were the preferred computational language or environment used. Additionally, the interviewees mentioned that identifying the core physics concepts within a program, explaining code to others, and good program hygiene (i.e., commenting and using meaningful variable names) are important skills for introductory students to acquire. We also find that while a handful of interviewees note that the experience and skills gained from computation are quite useful for student’s future careers, they also describe multiple limiting factors of teaching computation in introductory physics, such as curricular overhaul, not having “space” for computation’, and student rejection. The interviews show that while adding computational thinking to physics students’ repertoire is important, the importance really comes from using computational thinking to learn and understand physics better. This informs us that the assessment we develop should only include the basics of computational thinking needed to assess introductory physics knowledge.

Previous work has identified that recognition from others is an important predictor of students’ participation, persistence, and career intentions in physics. However, research has also found a gender bias in peer recognition in which student nominations of strong peers in their physics course disproportionately favor men over women. In this study, we draw on methods from social network analysis and find a consistent gender bias in which men disproportionately undernominate women as strong in their physics course in two offerings of both a lecture course (for science and engineering, but not physics, majors) and a distinct lab course (for science, engineering, and physics majors). We also find in one offering of the lecture course that women disproportionately undernominate men, contrary to what previous research would predict. We expand on prior work by also probing two data sources related to who and what gets recognized in peer recognition: students’ interactions with their peers (who gets recognized) and students’ written explanations of their nominations of strong peers (what gets recognized). Results suggest that the nature of the observed gender bias in peer recognition varies between the instructional contexts of lecture and lab. In the lecture course, the gender bias is related to who gets recognized: both men and women disproportionately overnominate their interaction ties to students of their same gender as strong in the course. In the lab course, the gender bias is also related to what gets recognized: men nominate men more than women because of skills related to interactions, such as being helpful. These findings illuminate the different ways in which students form perceptions of their peers and add nuance to our understanding of the nature of gender bias in peer recognition.

Literature on student ideas about circuits largely focuses on misunderstandings and difficulties, with seminal papers framing student thinking as stable, difficult to change, and connected to incorrect ontological categorizations of current as a thing rather than a process. In this paper, we analyzed 417 student responses to a conceptual question about electric circuits using a lens consistent with resources theory. We found that though indicators of substance-based reasoning about current are common in student responses, this reasoning is not predictive of other difficulties reported in the literature, such as “current is consumed” or “the battery is a constant source of current.” We also found that students use substance-based reasoning in resourceful ways, suggesting that substance-based reasoning may in fact be a productive starting place for instruction on circuits.

The assessment of test anxiety has received increasing attention in educational research due to the potential negative effects of anxiety on student performance. Traditionally, test anxiety scales have been developed for mathematics, but few studies have focused on physics. In this study, we validated two test anxiety scales for undergraduate physics courses: the Test Anxiety Inventory for Physics (TAIP) and the Abbreviated Test Anxiety Inventory for Physics scale (ATAIP), which were adapted from existing instruments. A convenience sample of 361 engineering students enrolled in a first-semester introductory physics course participated in the study. Confirmatory factor analysis and Rasch analysis were used to establish the construct validity of both scales. Convergent validity for the TAIP scale was established by examining its correlation with a scale adapted from the math anxiety scale. Criterion-related validity for both TAIP and ATAIP was established by analyzing the relationship between students’ Rasch scores on the two scales and their performance on two conceptual tests. Finally, measurement invariance of TAIP and ATAIP scales was established using both multigroup and differential item functioning analyses to reliably investigate gender differences in the corresponding Rasch measures. The study confirms a robust four-factor structure of the TAIP. The four subscales, Worry, Emotionality, Interference, and Lack of Confidence, demonstrate good reliability (McDonald’s $\omega =0.78,0.86,0.87,87$, respectively). Rash analysis also confirms that, for each subscale, the rating scale functioning was consistent with the item difficulty and person measures. The TAIP also demonstrates adequate convergent and criterion-related validity, as well as measurement invariance with respect to gender. The ATAIP also demonstrates good reliability (McDonald’s $\omega =0.84$), a well-functioning rating scale, and sufficient criterion-related validity. Additionally, it exhibits measurement invariance with respect to gender. Overall, the study supports that both the TAIP and ATAIP scales are reliable instruments for measuring students’ test anxiety in an undergraduate physics course. Implications for physics instruction at the university introductory level are briefly discussed.

Physicists engage with the public to varying degrees at different stages of their careers. However, their public engagement covers many activities, events, and audiences, making their motivations and professional development needs not well understood. As part of ongoing efforts to build and support a community in the informal physics space, we conducted interviews with physicists with a range of different experiences in public engagement. We use personas methodology and self-determination theory to articulate their public engagement motivation, challenges, and needs. We present our set of three personas: the physicist who engages in informal physics for self-reflection, the physicist who wants to spark interest and understanding in physics, and the physicist who wants to provide diverse role models to younger students and inspire them to pursue a science, technology, engineering, and mathematics career. Needs covered a range of resources including science communication training, community building among informal physics practitioners, and mechanisms to recognize, elevate, and value informal physics. By bringing user-centered design methodology to a new topical area of physics education research, we expand our understanding of motivations and needs of practitioners in physics public engagement. Therefore, departments, organizations, and institutions could draw upon the personas developed to consider the ways to better support physicists in their respective environments.

The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) is one of the research-based assessments established by the physics education research community to measure students’ understanding of Newtonian mechanics. Former works have often recorded the notion of gendered mean FCI scores favoring male students notably in the North American (NA) based studies. Nevertheless, these performance gaps remain inconclusive and unexplored outside the NA context. This paper aims to fill this gap by meta-analyzing the mean FCI scores between gender based on the existing physics education research literature internationally. We analyzed the magnitude and direction on the mean FCI scores between gender based on primary international studies published over the last two decades. We also explored the moderating impact of international study characteristics on the meta-analytic findings by performing a subgroup analysis to study the different study regions stratified by two subgroups (NA vs non-NA authors). Thirty-eight studies reporting the mean FCI scores by gender were included in the present meta-analysis. We employed Hedges’ $g$ statistic to estimate to what degree the mean FCI scores may be different between male and female students on each study. Under a random effects model, we meta-analyzed the findings and conducted a subgroup analysis to answer the research questions. In summary, our meta-analysis indicated a significantly positive and moderate amount of gendered mean FCI scores in favor of male students both in NA- and non-NA based regions, and the performance gaps were wider in the NA-based studies. Suggestions are discussed while interpreting the mean FCI scores between gender for teaching, learning, and forthcoming studies.

This study proposes methods of reporting results of physics conceptual evaluations that more fully characterize the range of outcomes experienced by students with differing levels of prior preparation, allowing for more meaningful comparison of the outcomes of educational interventions within and across institutions. Factors leading to variation in post-test scores on the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE) across different instructors, semesters, and course models in a sample collected in introductory calculus-based mechanics at a large, eastern land-grant university were examined. The sample was collected over nine years and contains a total of $N=4409$ matched pretest and post-test records. The data showed a systematic semester-by-semester variation in both pretest scores and ACT or SAT mathematics percentile scores. Neither the normalized gain nor Cohen’s $d$ removed the semester-to-semester variation observed in post-test scores. The local average curve plotting post-test scores against pretest scores, which we call a conceptual growth curve, allowed for the characterization of outcomes for students with different pretest scores. Regression models were used to produce an approximation to this curve. By using either the full curve or a mathematical approximation developed through linear regression, the post-test score that would be observed if a class enrolled students with a given level of prior preparation measured by pretest scores can be predicted. This predicted post-test score can then be used to calculate the predicted normalized gain if desired. These methods rely on using the natural variation of incoming student preparation at one institution to predict how a class would perform if it enrolled students with different prior preparation. The study presents an example of converting the outcomes at an institution with a weakly prepared student population to the outcomes which would have been observed if the course enrolled a more prepared student population; converting the outcomes for a different student population dramatically changed the interpretation of how the class studied was functioning.

Clear and rigorous quantum reasoning is needed to explain quantum physical phenomena. As pillars of true quantum physical explanations, we suggest specific quantum reasoning derived from quantum physical key ideas. An experiment is suggested to support such a quantum reasoning, in which a quantized radiation field interacts with an optical beam splitter, leading to experimental results conflicting with classical physical predictions. The results, however, can be explained consistently with a quantum reasoning based on the key ideas of probability, superposition, and interference (PSI). In this quantum optical key experiment the optical beam splitter prepares a superposition of single photon states and a Michelson interferometer is used to detect the superposition via controlled propagation phases. Although different single photon experimental setups (aimed at helping students to gain access to foundational issues in quantum physics) have been discussed in the past, the wave-particle dualism bound to classical physics maintains its predominance as an explanation pattern for the interpretation of these experiments. The study presented here investigates the effect of the quantum optical key experiment on the ability of students to use quantum reasoning based on the key ideas of PSI to overcome the naive wave-particle dualism. The current state of relevant studies that test student access to quantum physics can roughly be divided into two distinct areas: one tests how mathematical abilities help them to understand quantum physics and one tests how nonmathematical representations of a set of specific quantum theoretical traits (“Wesenszüge”) lead to a deeper understanding of quantum physics. There is a lack of questionnaires that focus on the idea of developing quantum reasoning based on superposition, probability, and interference of quantum states combined with a real experiment using true quantum light. In the first part of the article, we describe the physical modeling and present the development of the questionnaire. The set of items has been constructed from newly developed items and combined with well-tested ones. The validation of the set addresses qualitative and quantitative methods. In the second part, we give a pre- and poststudy examination of the impact of the quantum optical key experiment on students’ quantum reasoning. A significant increase in the number of students using quantum arguments is based on PSI reasoning for the explanation of an interference, such as the behavior of single photon states. Though the increase is significant, we found only minor changes in a particular issue to the students’ reasoning when approaching quantum physics as illustrated by a sample of answers given in the second part of the article. The concept of quantum states and the principle of superposition still appear particularly difficult.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Recent studies provide evidence that social constructivist pedagogical methods such as active learning, interactive engagement, and inquiry-based learning, while pedagogically more effective, can enable inequities in the classroom. By conducting a quantitative empirical examination of gender-inequitable group dynamics in two inquiry-based physics labs, we extend results of previous work. Using a survey on group work preferences and video recordings of lab sessions, we find similar patterns of gendered role taking noted in prior studies. These results are not reducible to differences in students’ preferences. We find that an intervention which employed partner agreement forms, with the goal of reducing inequities, had a positive impact on students’ engagement with equipment during a first-semester lab course. Our work will inform implementation of more effective interventions in the future and emphasizes challenges faced by instructors who are dedicated to both research-based pedagogical practices and efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in their classrooms.