Previously, we had reported on the relationship between AP physics experience and exam scores, and student scores on the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation and in an introductory calculus-based mechanics course [E. W. Burkholder and C. E. Wieman, Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 15, 020117 (2019)]. Two limitations to our previous work were that we aggregated data from algebra-based mechanics (AP physics 1) and calculus-based mechanics (AP physics C - Mechanics) courses, and that only 25% of the students who took AP physics reported their scores to the university; we addressed these limitations here. We found that there was no reporting bias in these scores for either AP course. We found that AP physics 1 (AP1) exam scores were predictive of students’ FMCE scores while AP physics C (APC) exam scores were not—this is consistent with our previous findings. We found that APC exam scores were more predictive of course grades in physics 1, but that students who scored a 5 on the AP1 exam also had high grades in physics 1, despite it being a calculus-based course. These results disagree with our previous findings that AP exam scores were not correlated with final exam scores after controlling for SAT or ACT math scores, likely due to the variability in course final exams from year to year. Though these results are for a single, highly selective university, they provide some key insights to educators about the value of AP courses. One important implication is that students who score a 5 on the AP1 exam can likely receive credit for the calculus-based introductory course, increasing access to higher level physics courses for students whose high schools do not have access to APC courses.

Learning about the nature of science is an important aspect of becoming part of the culture of practicing physicists. While these topics have a long-standing tradition in U.S. curricula they are currently not part of German educational standards or curricula. And while there is some research concerning primary and secondary school students’ beliefs in this area, there are hardly any data about German university students. In this study we query 100 physics students in their first to fifth semester at a German university for their views of nature of science. We then compare them to a sample of physics professors at German universities from an earlier study. The students exhibit quite adequate views in some areas but could improve on their knowledge of the variability of scientific methods and the tentativeness and limited certainty of scientific knowledge—two issues they have in common with the professors. If we interpret the sample longitudinally, we see positive development in the first but worsening in the latter area.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly affected the education system worldwide, which was forced to respond with a sudden shift to distance learning. While successful distance teaching requires careful thinking, planning, and the development of technological and human resources, there was no time for preparation in the current situation. Various physics courses, including lectures, tutorials, and laboratory courses, had to be transferred to online formats, resulting in a variety of simultaneous, asynchronous, and mixed activities. To investigate how physics students perceived the sudden shift to online learning, we developed a questionnaire and gathered data from $N=578$ physics students from five universities in Germany, Austria, and Croatia. In this article, we report how the problem-solving sessions (recitations) and laboratories were adapted, how students judge the different formats of the courses, and how useful and effective they perceived them. The results are correlated with the students’ self-efficacy ratings and other behavioral measures (such as self-regulated learning skills). This study is descriptive in nature, and a survey study design was implemented to examine the relationships among the variables. We found that good communication abilities ($r=0.48$, $p<0.001$) and self-organization skills ($r=0.63$, $p<0.001$) are positively correlated with perceived learning achievement. Furthermore, the previous duration of studies had a significant impact on several self-reported achievement measures, resulting in consistently lower scores of students in their first academic year compared with students who were further along academically. We draw conclusions and suggest implications for future online classes on the instructor and faculty level. Suggestions include (i) focusing on first-year courses with on-campus teaching when facing limited lecture hall capacities, (ii) offering special courses for promoting self-regulated learning skills, (iii) emphasizing the positive aspects of distance learning, and (iv) installing networking services for supporting student communication.

The American Physical Society calls on its members to improve the diversity of physics by supporting an inclusive culture that encourages women and Black, Indigenous, and people of color to become physicists. In the current educational system, it is unlikely for a student to become a physicist if they do not share the same attitudes about what it means to learn and do physics as those held by most professional physicists. Evidence shows college physics courses and degree programs do not support students in developing these attitudes. Rather physics education filters out students who do not enter college physics courses with these attitudes. To better understand the role of attitudes in the lack of diversity in physics, we investigated the intersecting relationships between racism and sexism in inequities in student attitudes about learning and doing physics using a critical quantitative framework. The analyses used hierarchical linear models to examine students’ attitudes as measured by the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey. The data came from the Learning About STEM Student Outcomes database and included 2170 students in 46 calculus-based mechanics courses and 2503 students in 49 algebra-based mechanics courses taught at 18 institutions. Like prior studies, we found that attitudes either did not change or slightly decreased for most groups. Results identified large differences across intersecting race and gender groups representing educational debts society owes these students. White students, particularly White men in calculus-based courses, tended to have more expertlike attitudes than any other group of students. Instruction that addresses society’s educational debts can help move physics toward an inclusive culture supportive of diverse students and professionals.

As a method to shorten the test time of the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), we suggest the use of computerized adaptive testing (CAT). CAT is the process of administering a test on a computer, with items (i.e., questions) selected based upon the responses of the examinee to prior items. In so doing, the test length can be significantly shortened. As a step to develop a CAT-based version of the FCI (FCI-CAT), we examined the optimal test length of the FCI-CAT such that accuracy and precision [which we measure in terms of bias, standard error, and root-mean-square error (RMSE)] of Cohen’s $d$ would be comparable to that of the full FCI for a given class size. First, we estimated the item parameters of the FCI items based on the three-parameter logistic model of item response theory, which are used in the algorithm of CAT. For this estimation, we used 2882 responses of Japanese university students. Second, we conducted a Monte Carlo simulation to analyze how the bias, standard error, and RMSE of Cohen’s $d$ depend upon the test length. Third, we conducted a post hoc simulation to examine the consistency of the Monte Carlo results with what would have been obtained using empirical responses. For this comparison, we used 86 pairs of pre- and post- test responses of Japanese university students. As a result, we found that for a class size of 40, we may reduce the test length of the FCI-CAT to 15–19 items, thereby reducing the test time of the FCI to 50%–63%, with an accompanying decrease in accuracy and precision of only 5%–10%. The results of the Monte Carlo study and the post hoc simulation were consistent, which supports the adequacy of our Monte Carlo study and its relevance in terms of administering the FCI-CAT in real classrooms.

Women continue to be underrepresented in physics in the United States. This is while many Muslim majority (MM) countries have a high representation of women in undergraduate and graduate physics programs. While there is a growing awareness of this trend, little is being done to understand why and how this trend has manifested and how it can be used to inform broadening the participation of women in physics in the U.S. To better understand how cultural experiences can influence the pursuit of physics, this study examines the lived experiences of female physics faculty members in the U.S. who came from MM countries. The study draws on seven phenomenological interviews focusing on how cultural experiences shaped participants’ gender and physics identities. The results reveal several possible hypotheses on differences and similarities in how physics and gender identities intersect in MM countries as opposed to what has been found in the West. In particular, expressions of femininity in MM countries can have a more constructive intersection with expressions of physics identity in ways that promote participation and persistence.

Although recent research has reported equity gains in the university-level physics classroom, there remains evidence of significant inequities by race. We conducted a series of multiple linear regressions to examine the magnitude of these inequities in introductory mechanics final exam scores. When we followed a common method of grouping students by underrepresented minority (URM) status in our statistical analysis, we found that when controlling for prior knowledge, based on ACT math and physics placement test scores, there was no evidence of racial inequities. However, when we performed the same analysis but replaced URM status with separate groups for each race or ethnicity reported to the university, we found that African American and Asian American students, and to a lesser extent, Hispanic students, underperformed in their physics course relative to their non-Hispanic White American peers, even when controlling for prior knowledge. We conclude that grouping students by URM status may not be sufficient to detect patterns of academic difficulties experienced by specific racial and ethnic groups of students. Furthermore, these results lead us to believe that there is still work to be done at the university level to provide a learning environment supportive of students of all backgrounds.

In two earlier studies, we developed a new method to measure students’ ability to transfer physics problem-solving skills to new contexts using a sequence of online learning modules, and implemented two interventions in the form of additional learning modules designed to improve transfer ability. The current paper introduces a new data analysis scheme that could improve the accuracy of the measurement by accounting for possible differences in students’ goal orientation and behavior, as well as revealing the possible mechanism by which one of the two interventions improves transfer ability. Based on a $2\times 2$ framework of self-regulated learning, students with a performance-avoidance oriented goal are more likely to guess on some of the assessment attempts in order to save time, resulting in an underestimation of the student populations’ transfer ability. The current analysis shows that about half of the students had frequent brief initial assessment attempts, and significantly lower correct rates on certain modules, which we think is likely to have originated at least in part from students adopting a performance-avoidance strategy. We then divided the remaining population, for which we can be certain that few students adopted a performance-avoidance strategy, based on whether they interacted with one of the intervention modules designed to develop basic problem-solving skills, or passed that module on their first attempt without interacting with the instructional material. By comparing to propensity score matched populations from a previous semester, we found that the improvement in subsequent transfer performance observed in a previous study mainly came from the latter population, suggesting that the intervention served as an effective reminder for students to activate existing skills, but fell short of developing those skills among those who have yet to master it.

Physics program for girls (PPG) is a two-week program held every summer since 2006, with the goal of engaging young women in inquiry-based physics experiments and to connect them with female science, technology, engineering, and mathematics professional role models. The program recruits young women to participate the summer after they have taken chemistry but before they enroll in their first high school physics course. Qualitative data collected over the years about PPG have shown that the program has been positively perceived by participants; 87% said they are more prepared for physics, 95% said that they think physics might be hard, but believe they can do it, and 91% said that they are positive that they will earn an A or B in their science course. However, there has not been any analysis of PPG students’ performance in their introductory physics classes. The goal of this paper is to understand this impact using chemistry and physics end of semester assessment scores for girls who participated in PPG, as well as girls who did not participate in PPG but were from the same schools and had similar demographics to the PPG participants. Girls who participated in PPG performed comparably to girls who did not participate in PPG on chemistry, but PPG girls performed better than non-PPG girls in physics. This finding persisted even after controlling for the prior year’s chemistry scores.

Recognition of interference and diffraction patterns is a difficult task for both high-school and university students. Many students fail to observe important features of particular patterns and identify the differences among similar patterns. In this study, we investigated if performing students’ investigative experiments can help high-school students in recognition of typical interference and diffraction patterns. Students in the experimental group were exposed to a teaching intervention that included five students’ investigative hands-on experiments on wave optics whereas the control group had the standard lecture-based physics teaching. We measured eye movements of students from both the experimental and control groups while they were identifying patterns produced by monochromatic light on a double slit, single slit, and diffraction grating, and by white light on a diffraction grating. Students from the experimental group had a higher percentage of correct answers than students in the control group that indicated that students’ investigative experiments had a positive effect on their recognition of interference and diffraction patterns. However, the low percentage of correct answers, even in the experimental group, confirms that distinguishing of the typical interference and diffraction patterns remains a difficult task for high-school students even if they had performed investigative hands-on experiments. Eye-tracking data showed that students from the experimental group had a shorter dwell on multiple-choice patterns, possibly because they were more familiar with interference and diffraction patterns and felt more confident in choosing the correct pattern. All students attended more to those patterns which they chose as the correct answer and that corroborates the previous findings. Overall, the results indicate that students’ recognition of interference and diffraction patterns can be improved by introducing hands-on investigative experiments in the classroom.

Despite limiting access to applicants from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, the practice of using hard or soft Graduate Record Examination (GRE) cutoff scores in physics graduate program admissions is still a popular method for reducing the pool of applicants. The present study considers whether the undergraduate institutions of applicants have any influence on the admissions process by modeling a physics GRE cutoff score with application data from admissions offices of five universities. Two distinct approaches based on inferential and predictive modeling are conducted. While there is some disagreement regarding the relative importance between features, the two approaches largely agree that including institutional information significantly aids the analysis. Both models identify cases where the institutional effects are comparable to factors of known importance such as gender and undergraduate GPA. As the results are stable across many cutoff scores, we advocate against the practice of employing physics GRE cutoff scores in admissions.

Previous work has looked at the relationship between high school preparation and student performance in calculus-based introductory mechanics (physics 1) courses. Here, we extend that work to look at performance in introductory calculus-based electricity and magnetism (physics 2), and we look at the significance of what college math courses have been completed in addition to high school preparation. Using multiple linear regression including these measures of prior preparation, we examine the correlation between taking various math courses in college and final exam scores in introductory physics courses at a highly selective west coast university. In physics 1, we find that prior college math coursework is not a predictor of physics 1 final exam score. In physics 2, we find that having taken a course in vector calculus is a strong predictor of physics 2 exam performance (effect $\mathrm{size}=0.58$ standard deviations, $p<0.001$), even when controlling for students’ physics 1 final exam scores (effect $\mathrm{size}=0.27$ standard deviations, $p<0.01$). These effect sizes are similar in magnitude to other measures of students’ incoming physics and math preparation. Qualitative analysis of student exams from physics 2 reveal that this “vector calculus gap” is due to differences in reasoning about vectors and geometry and some differences in conceptual understanding of circuits, as vector calculus itself is not required to perform well on the final exam. That is, basic reasoning related to vector calculus appears to be important, but the formalisms of vector calculus do not.

This study examined the mediation and moderation of membership in a demographic group underrepresented in physics classes on course outcomes measured by course grades and Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE) post-test scores. The study used a large dataset ($N=4490$) of course grades, SAT and ACT mathematics scores (ACTM), and matched FMCE pretest and post-test scores to investigate differences by gender, underrepresented ethnic or racial minority (UERM) status, and status as a first-generation college student (FGCS). For UERM and FGCS students, ACTM and pretest scores significantly mediated the relation of membership in the demographic group and both course grade and post-test score. Differences between minority and majority members of these groups were largely removed by controlling for ACTM and pretest scores. The overwhelming majority of the effect acted through ACTM for course grade (60% and 45%, respectively), while more of the effect acted through pretest score for the post-test (36% and 48%, respectively). As such, for these groups prior preparation measures predict physics outcomes (course grades or post-test scores) differently. The mediational relations for gender were dramatically different. No mediation was detected for the relation of gender to course grade because no significant difference in course grade existed. Sixty percent of the effect of gender on post-test score was not explained by either ACTM or pretest score; pretest score accounted for 38% of the effect. As such, the majority of the difference in post-test scores between men and women was not explained by either ACTM or pretest scores. Significant moderation was also detected showing that the relation of these variables was not consistent for members of all demographic groups.

Studies examining gender differences in introductory physics show a consensus when it comes to a gender gap on conceptual assessments; however, the story is not as clear when it comes to differences in gendered performance on exams. This study examined whether gendered differences exist on midterm and final exams in introductory physics courses and if such differences were correlated with a gender difference in final course grades. The population for this study included more than 10 000 students enrolled in algebra- and calculus-based introductory physics courses between Spring 2007 and Spring 2019. We found a small but statistically significant difference, with a weak effect size, in final letter grades for only one out of four courses: algebra-based mechanics. By looking at midterm exam grades, statistically significant differences were noted for some exams in three out of four courses, with calculus-based electricity and magnetism being the exception. In all statistically significant cases, the effect size was small or weak, indicating that performance on exams and final letter grades was not strongly dependent on gender. As an added dimension examining gendered differences, we investigated if differences exist when accounting for instructor gender. Additionally, a questionnaire was administered in Fall 2019 to more than 1600 students in both introductory sequences to explore students’ perceptions of performance, class contributions, and inclusion. We observed some differences between students’ perception of their performance and contribution when grouped by gender, but no difference on perception of inclusion.

Item banks are generally considered the basis of a new generation of educational measurement. In combination with specialized software, they can facilitate the computerized assembling of multiple pre-equated test forms. However, for advantages of item banks to become fully realized it is important that the item banks store a relatively large number of valid test items. In this paper, we demonstrate how the Rasch model is used for integrating new items into an existing wave optics item bank. First, we identified and applied a set of criteria for selecting 18 linking items from our initial item bank. In order to integrate 12 newly developed items, we combined the 18 linking items with the 12 newly developed ones into one test and administered this test to 106 postinstruction physics students from 4 universities in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was determined that the 12 new items measure the same construct as items from the initial item bank. In addition, all items exhibited good item fit, item reliability was excellent and person reliability was fair. The ratio of standard deviations of linking item difficulties for the new test and existing item bank amounted to 0.89 and correlation of these difficulties amounted to 0.93 which indicated good linking precision. We could conclude that good linking precision can be obtained if linking items are chosen based on the following set of criteria: number of items, item fit, range and spacing of item difficulties, content representativeness, position in test form and interuniversity DIF contrasts.

We discuss the development and validation of a conceptual multiple-choice survey instrument called the survey of thermodynamic processes and first and second laws (STPFaSL) suitable for introductory physics courses. The survey instrument uses common student difficulties with these concepts as resources in that the incorrect answers to the multiple-choice questions were guided by them. After the development and validation of the survey instrument, the final version was administered at six different institutions. It was administered to introductory physics students in various traditionally taught calculus-based and algebra-based classes in paper-pencil format before and after traditional lecture-based instruction in relevant concepts. We also administered the survey instrument to upper-level undergraduates majoring in physics and Ph.D. students for benchmarking and for content validity and compared their performance with those of introductory students for whom the survey is intended. We find that although the survey instrument focuses on thermodynamics concepts covered in introductory courses, it is challenging even for advanced students. A comparison with the base line data on the validated survey instrument presented here can help instructors evaluate the effectiveness of innovative pedagogies designed to help students develop a solid grasp of these concepts.

We conducted a semester-long ethnographic study of group work in a physics class that implemented the investigative science learning environment approach. Students’ conversations were videotaped while they were engaged in group learning activities. Our primary research goal was to better understand what factors made some groups more effective than others. We developed a coding scheme that uses particular modality markers such as hedging and upward inflection to identify how students position themselves in these group conversations. Additionally we quantified group effectiveness by how many key ideas in a particular activity a group negotiated and resolved through the course of their conversation. This research builds on theories of social positioning that posit that groups are more effective when their discussion is more equitable. Our exploratory study indicates that groups whose participants position themselves in a more equitable way, are more effective at completing challenging physics activities and resolving areas of confusion that arise.

The Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) is a widely used multiple-choice instrument measuring a student’s conceptual understanding of electricity and magnetism. This study applied modified module analysis (MMA) and modified module analysis—partial (MMA-P), network analytic methods that identify groups of correlated responses, to CSEM data from two institutions ($N=2538$ and 3595). In module analysis, groups of correlated responses are called “communities.” As in previous applications of MMA and MMA-P to mechanics conceptual inventories, a number of communities related to physics concepts and some communities related to the structure of blocked items in the inventory were identified. An item block is a set of items all referring to each other or to a common stem. Many blocked communities involved responses where the response to the later item would be correct if the response to the earlier item was correct. This suggests a modified scoring rubric for the CSEM is needed to account for these connections between items. A modified scoring rubric is proposed; however, the modified overall average scores changed by less than 1%. The communities of incorrect responses to the CSEM related to physical concepts had varied explanations. These explanations ranged from seemingly straightforward errors (the electric field pointing to higher potential or reversing the right-hand rule), to misconceptions about Newton’s 2nd and 3rd laws carried over from mechanics, to naive reasoning conflating general topics in electricity and magnetism. The identification of incorrect communities allowed the computation of misconception scores showing how prevalent the misconceptions were in the classes studied.

A large body of research shows that using interactive engagement pedagogy in the introductory physics classroom consistently results in significant student learning gains; however, with a few exceptions, those learning gains tend not to be accompanied by more expertlike attitudes and beliefs about physics and learning physics. In fact, in both traditionally taught and active learning classroom environments, students often become more novicelike in their attitudes and beliefs following a semester of instruction. Furthermore, prior to instruction, men typically score higher than women on conceptual inventories, such as the Force Concept Inventory (FCI), and more expertlike on attitudinal surveys, such as the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS), and those gender gaps generally persist following instruction. In this paper, we analyze three years of pre-post matched data for physics majors at Virginia Tech on the FCI and the CLASS. The courses were taught using a blended pedagogical model of peer instruction, group problem solving, and direct instruction, along with an explicit focus on the importance of conceptual understanding and a growth mindset. We found that the FCI gender gap decreased, and both men and women showed positive, expertlike shifts on the CLASS. Perhaps most surprisingly, we found a meaningful correlation between a student’s post-CLASS score and normalized FCI gain for women, but not for men.

Effective faculty professional development must be participant centered; tailored to the needs and interests of the faculty who engage in it. In order to better understand those needs and interests, we investigate how knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and teaching practice vary among new physics faculty, using surveys of a large sample ($n=442$) of participants in the Physics and Astronomy New Faculty Workshop (NFW). The “innovation-decision model” guides our understanding of the evolution of faculty teaching practice, and “self-determination theory” and the “theory of planned behavior” inform our understanding of necessary preconditions for that change. We find that most new physics faculty are aware of published teaching approaches, but that this awareness has not increased compared to a decade ago [C. Henderson and M. H. Dancy, Phys. Rev. Phys. Educ. Res. 5, 020107 (2009)] and is lower than the experienced faculty in our sample. New physics faculty also value student-centered instruction, are interested in using it, and feel that there is peer support for using student-centered instruction. Some new faculty have experienced student-centered instruction as a student or teaching assistant, as well. They are not confident of their ability to enact such practices, however, showing that self-efficacy is an important target for faculty learning. New physics faculty also reported high levels of use of student-centered practice which were similar to experienced faculty in this study and similar or higher than a study from a decade ago. Overall, our results suggest a continued shift in norms in the physics community, such that most new physics faculty enter the professoriate needing minimal encouragement to try student-centered instruction, having already experienced and experimented with such techniques. We do find, however, that about 20% of new faculty are not as open to student-centered instruction and have not yet experimented with it, and that more of these faculty are at Ph.D.-granting institutions. We propose that the innovation-decision model might be best imagined as cyclical, with faculty moving forward and backwards along stages of the cycle as they experiment with their teaching. We recommend those creating professional development experiences for faculty explore opportunities to support faculty as agentic learners engaged in a process of lifelong learning by helping them develop self-efficacy, agency, and metacognition. One way to accomplish these goals might be to focus professional development on faculty choosing something new to try, and (critically) learning from the experience. We also encourage the field to move away from focusing research and professional development on specific, branded teaching practices.