Supporting efforts to grow the scientific workforce means articulating and comparing the content of science field stereotypes. To do this, data were collected from the general public [undergraduates ($n=121$) and Amazon Mechanical Turk workers ($n=223$)] as well as from people within science [attendees of an undergraduate conference for women in physics ($n=34$)]. Participants were randomly assigned to consider either biologists or physicists and then produce both spontaneous judgments and rate various person traits (e.g., ratings related to looks and personality and hobbies) and field characteristics (e.g., ratings related to the working conditions, norms, and expectations for the field). Analyses show stereotypes of the scientist and the science field were statistically significantly negative overall, with stereotypes about physicists and the field of physics more negative than biology. Compared to biologists, physicists were perceived as statistically significantly more competent, but statistically significantly more unattractive, tech oriented, awkward, and loners. Furthermore, compared to biology, a job in physics was viewed as having fewer opportunities for working with and helping others, but more opportunities for agency, a greater requirement for innate brilliance and effort to succeed, and as more difficult. That said, physicists were more envied than biologists. Data were triangulated with open-ended responses illustrating that across samples, people are more likely to reproduce science stereotypes for physicists. Implications for stereotype research and broadening participation of the science workforce are discussed, with a focus on the utility of role models and classroom interventions that negate stereotypes such as writing activities and encouraging students to approach physics with a growth mindset. Instructors are encouraged to consider what stereotypes students have about the field of physics and physicists. At the department level, instructors are encouraged to consider hosting a Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics sponsored in part by the American Physical Society.

We analyze how participating in undergraduate research experiences (UREs) influenced physics students’ trajectories of participation within the community of practice of physics researchers. Students in the study participated in an elective seminar in which they were paired with graduate student and faculty mentors on physics research projects and participated in weekly discussions about research. Using video data from student interviews and mentor interviews, we characterize two aspects of students’ engagement in the physics community of practice. First, we find variations in their engagement in physics practice, which we characterize as physics activities that are connected and purposeful. Second, we characterize forms of joint work by the research project’s form and structure and by patterns of interaction between undergraduates and mentors. We argue that forms of joint work influenced students’ varied senses of how physics activities are connected and purposeful. Finally, we use this understanding to suggest how to better scaffold UREs.

The test of understanding of vectors (TUV) is a multiple-choice test that was recently developed to assess student understanding of vector concepts required in introductory physics courses at the university level. In this study, the TUV was administered to 889 first-year students at the University of Zagreb. The Rasch model was used to evaluate the functioning of the TUV, and to determine the difficulty scale of vector concepts evaluated by this assessment instrument. The results of the Rasch analysis showed a good functioning of test items. However, the TUV was not well targeted to our sample of first-year engineering and science students in introductory physics courses. About half of the students had abilities outside the range of item difficulties, indicating that the TUV would benefit from including more difficult items that would help to better estimate the abilities of these students. Further analysis of the data from subpopulations in our sample showed that the TUV can be well targeted for certain student populations. Students’ scores suggest that the most difficult vector concept tested by the TUV is the unit vector, followed by the cross product, subtraction of vectors, dot product, and direction of a vector.

Self-efficacy can affect performance, career goals, and persistence. Prior studies show that female students have lower self-efficacy than male students in various science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) domains, and the self-efficacy gap is a factor that contributes to the low representation of female students in STEM. However, prior research has not decoupled self-efficacy differences from performance differences. This study examines the self-efficacy of male and female students with similar performance in introductory physics courses and investigates whether gender gaps in self-efficacy are persistent across different instructors and course formats. Students filled out a self-efficacy in physics survey before physics 1, before physics 2, and at the end of physics 2. Students’ achievement was measured by their performance on research-based conceptual physics tests and course grades. The physics courses were taught by several instructors and varied in the type of pedagogy used, with some using a “flipped” format and others using a traditional, lecture-based format. We found that female students had lower self-efficacy than male students at all performance levels in both physics 1 and physics 2. The self-efficacy gaps continued to grow throughout the introductory physics course sequence, regardless of course format (i.e., traditional or flipped) and instructor. The findings suggest that female students’ self-efficacy was negatively impacted by their experiences in introductory physics courses, and this result is persistent across various instructors and course formats. Female students’ lower self-efficacy compared to similarly performing male students can result in detrimental short-term and long-term impacts.

Although physics teachers often seek to help their students make sense of physics concepts, our field has yet to thoroughly explore how and why students engage in sensemaking. In this study we use the epistemic games framework to propose a model for students’ sensemaking processes. Our analysis of a series of clinical interviews with introductory physics students discussing electricity and magnetism topics suggests the goal of this sensemaking game is to iteratively construct an explanation in response to a perceived gap or inconsistency in knowledge. We illustrate the model with a case study of two students discussing electric current and use that case to outline the entry conditions, exit conditions, and several moves and constraints within this sensemaking game. We conclude by arguing for the utility of this model in designing learning environments that support sensemaking and in directing future sensemaking-focused research.

The research reported in this article represents a systematic, multiyear investigation of student understanding of the behavior of bipolar junction transistor circuits using a variety of different tasks to isolate and probe key aspects of transistor circuit behavior. The participants in this study were undergraduates enrolled in upper-division physics electronics courses at three institutions, as well as undergraduates in upper-division engineering electronics courses at one of the institutions. Findings from this research indicate that many students have not developed a robust conceptual understanding of the functionality of bipolar junction transistors circuits even after all relevant instruction. Most notably, when asked to analyze the impact of a transistor circuit on input signals, students frequently applied reasoning appropriate for an analysis of the circuit’s dc bias behavior. However, students often displayed knowledge of fundamental transistor behavior when responding to more targeted questions. This article provides insight into student thinking about transistor circuits, describing the most prevalent conceptual and reasoning difficulties identified and discussing some important implications for instruction.

Physics problems can be posed in different ways. Given a physics scenario, different problem types presenting that scenario in various ways can emphasize different instructional goals. In this investigation, we examined the views of physics graduate teaching assistants (TAs) enrolled in a semester-long TA professional development course about the instructional benefits of different types of introductory problems based upon the same problem scenario to generate discussion and reflection on their use in different instructional situations. The TAs were asked to list the pros and cons of the problem types, rank them in terms of their instructional benefit and the level of challenge they might produce for their students, and describe when and how often they would use different types of problems in their own classes if they had complete control of teaching the class. Here we report on TAs’ views about two of these problem types that were regarded by TAs as the least instructionally beneficial of all problem types—the context-rich and multiple-choice formats. Many TAs listed no pros at all for these problem types, despite being explicitly asked for at least one pro. They viewed multiple-choice questions nearly exclusively as tools for high stakes summative assessment rather than their possible use as formative assessment tools, e.g., as clicker questions even in large classes. Similarly, TAs viewed context-rich problems as overly challenging, unnecessarily wordy, and too time consuming to be instructionally beneficial to their students. It is possible that in the written responses, TAs could have focused on the example problems provided to illustrate each problem type. Therefore, discussion in the TA professional development class and in the follow-up interviews explicitly included a focus on the general instructional benefits of well-designed multiple-choice and context-rich problems in different instructional contexts based upon the goals. It appears that TAs’ sentiments were general views about these types of problems, and not just their views about the specific examples that the TAs were given in order to illustrate a problem type. While TAs’ concerns have obvious validity and value, the benefits of well-designed multiple-choice questions as a formative assessment tool was not readily identified by them, nor did the TAs recognize the learning benefits associated with solving context-rich problems. Given the powerful ways multiple-choice and context-rich problems can be used for active engagement and formative assessment in different instructional contexts to meet diverse instructional goals, the lack of enthusiasm for these types of problems has implications for future TA professional development programs.

Several prior studies in introductory physics have found a gender gap, i.e., a difference between male and female students’ performance on conceptual assessments such as the Force Concept Inventory (FCI) and the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism (CSEM) with male students performing better than female students. Moreover, prior studies in the context of mathematics have also found that activation of a negative stereotype about a group or stereotype threat, e.g., asking test takers to indicate their ethnicity before taking a test, can lead to deteriorated performance of the stereotyped group. Here, we describe two studies in which we investigated the impact of interventions on the gender gap on the FCI and CSEM in large (more than 100 students) introductory physics courses at a large research university. In the first study, we investigated whether asking introductory physics students to indicate their gender immediately before taking the CSEM increased the gender gap compared to students who were not asked for this information. We found no difference in performance between male and female students in the two conditions. In the second study, which was conducted with several thousand introductory physics students, we investigated the prevalence of the belief that men generally perform better in physics than women and the extent to which this belief is correlated with the performance of both female and male students on the FCI and the CSEM in algebra-based and calculus-based physics courses. We found that at the end of the year-long calculus-based introductory physics sequence, in which female students are significantly underrepresented, agreeing with a gender stereotype was correlated negatively with the performance of female students on the conceptual physics surveys. The fact that female students who agreed with the gender stereotype performed worse than female students who disagreed with it at the end of the year-long calculus-based physics course may partly be due to an increased stereotype threat that female students who agree with the stereotype may experience in this course in which they are severely underrepresented.

The ability to develop, use, and refine models of experimental systems is a nationally recognized learning outcome for undergraduate physics lab courses. However, no assessments of students’ model-based reasoning exist for upper-division labs. This study is the first step toward development of modeling assessments for optics and electronics labs. We interviewed 35 lab instructors about the ways they incorporate modeling in their courses, and we used their self-reported learning goals and activity designs to identify test contexts and objectives that are likely relevant across many institutional settings. The study design was informed by the Modeling Framework for Experimental Physics, which conceptualizes modeling as consisting of multiple subtasks: making measurements, constructing system models, comparing data to predictions, proposing causes for discrepancies, and enacting revisions to models or apparatus. We found that each modeling subtask was identified by multiple instructors as an important learning outcome for their course. Based on these results, we argue that test objectives should include probing students’ competence with most modeling subtasks, and test items should be designed to elicit students’ justifications for choosing particular modeling pathways. In addition to discussing these and other implications for assessment, we also identify future areas of research related to the role of modeling in optics and electronics labs.

In this work, we explore how undergraduate students use classical field theory when describing physical phenomena in the context of introductory electromagnetism. We have extracted five key characteristics of the electric and magnetic field from a historical analysis of the topic. These characteristics informed the creation of a questionnaire comprising six free-response conceptual questions. The questionnaire instrument was administered to undergraduate students in three European countries. Phenomenographical analysis of the students’ responses shows that many undergraduates do not have a coherent idea of field theory. We conclude that, rather than focusing on teaching rules with which to calculate, more attention should be paid to the specific characteristics of field theory and the difference between fields and forces, with particular emphasis on the conceptual interpretation of the interaction process.

In many situations, the change in the conceptual understanding of students is measured using a single question. This is, for instance, the case in peer instruction where students answer twice to the same questions, before and after the discussion phase. Using item response theory and assuming that students proficiencies are normally distributed, it is shown that the Cohen’s $d$ effect size characterizing the change of mean proficiencies can be estimated by taking 0.6 times the log of the odds ratio of class scores. Moreover the polychoric correlation coefficient between students’ answers is suggested as an additional indicator to detect abnormal changes in scores when its value is below 0.3. Taken together, these two indicators give both a precise measurement of a pedagogical intervention—a peer discussion or something else—and a coefficient of security to detect random answers or poor writing of questions. The application is made to the evaluation of peer discussions that took place in an introductory mechanics course taught using peer instruction.

We have developed, implemented, and assessed a teaching-learning sequence that aims to enhance students’ understanding of the divergence and curl of electromagnetic fields. We designed guided-inquiry worksheets based on student difficulties we identified during semiquantitative and qualitative studies and discussions in the literature. A multiple representation approach was adopted to strengthen the link between graphical representations of vector fields, calculations involving divergence and curl, and Maxwell’s equations in differential form. We used the Design, Functions, Tasks framework to optimize learning with the multiple external representations exhibited in our learning materials. These guided-inquiry worksheets used in small-group tutorials comprise short open-ended questions that encourage discussions in small groups of students. They were implemented in three consecutive years in a second-year electrodynamics course at KU Leuven. The intervention was assessed using the same pretest and post-test design adopted to evaluate learning in the original instruction. In addition, we gauged our students’ opinions on the intervention. We observed that our intervention positively affected our students’ structural understanding of the vector operators, their ability to interpret divergence and curl in graphical representations of vector fields, and their conceptual understanding of Maxwell’s equations in differential form. In addition, our students indicated that they enjoyed the teaching approach, felt they learned something from the worksheets, agreed with the difficulty level of the materials, and would like similar tutorials on different subjects.

Numerical and symbolic representations are used extensively in physics problems. However, relatively little is understood about how students respond to these two representational formats when they are solving problems. This study examined the effect of the representational format (numeric vs symbolic) on the problem-solving performance, self-efficacy, and perceptions of students. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected during this two-stage study: the first stage involved 100 10th graders solving problems that were in either the numerical or symbolic format, while in the second stage a subset of the students (6 from each group) solved physics problems in another format and were subsequently interviewed. The results showed that the numerical group significantly outperformed the symbolic group. Moreover, boys reported significantly higher self-efficacy than girls, even though no gender difference was found in their performance. In the problem-solving process, there were significant differences in how the interviewees performed when executing the plan and evaluating the solution between the two formats. We also found that most students perceived the symbolic problems as being more difficult than the numeric ones. These findings provide insights into better ways for teachers to support how students learn about physics problems in the numerical and symbolic representations.

This study presents findings on the physics identity development of female students in the German Physics Olympiad who participated in an intervention designed to support their engagement in physics. Enrichment programs such as the Physics Olympiad have been found to positively impact students’ engagement and intent to pursue a career in science. However, many enrichment programs, including the Physics Olympiad, suffer from an underrepresentation of young women. The intervention investigated in this study capitalizes on gender-related research in physics education in order to explore ways in which gender equity can be raised in enrichment programs. To this end, we designed an identity-safe learning environment that facilitates participating young women’s physics identity development. For example, same-sex groupings and considerately adopted physics contents that particularly acknowledge young women’s interests (e.g., relation to medical issues and the human body) were utilized. Overall, 30 Olympians took part in a one-day intervention (13 females, 17 males). Positive effects in two important physics identity constructs, namely, interest and competence, for young women were found, while at the same time no effects were found for young men. Furthermore, the young women were more likely to participate in next year’s Physics Olympiad, compared to the overall female Physics Olympiad population. These results indicate that the careful design of an intervention based on gender research and science identity theory can support young women’s physics identity development.

We compute nodal centrality measures on the collaboration networks of students enrolled in three upper-division physics courses, usually taken sequentially, at the Colorado School of Mines. These are complex networks in which links between students indicate assistance with homework. The courses included in the study are intermediate classical mechanics, introductory quantum mechanics, and intermediate electromagnetism. By correlating these nodal centrality measures with students’ scores on homework and exams, we find four centrality measures that correlate significantly with students’ homework scores in all three courses: in-strength, out-strength, closeness centrality, and harmonic centrality. These correlations suggest that students who not only collaborate often, but also collaborate significantly with many different people tend to achieve higher grades. Centrality measures between simultaneous collaboration networks (analytical versus numerical homework collaboration) composed of the same students also correlate with each other, suggesting that students’ collaboration strategies remain relatively stable when presented with homework assignments targeting different skills. Additionally, we correlate centrality measures between collaboration networks from different courses and find that the four centrality measures with the strongest relationship to students’ homework scores are also the most stable measures across networks involving different courses. Correlations of centrality measures with exam scores were generally smaller than the correlations with homework scores, though this finding varied across courses.

This study is focused on student recognition beliefs as related to a role identity development. More specifically, using the theoretical framework of physics identity and emotional scaffolding, we investigate the impact of two types of recognizing strategies, i.e., explicit (ER) and implicit recognizing (IR), on high school students’ sense of recognition and physics identity. ER is teachers directly conveying their acknowledgment of students’ qualities or abilities, such as acknowledging good work and expressing faith in student ability, and IR is teachers indirectly acknowledging students’ qualities or abilities via assigning them a position or a task that demands those qualities or abilities, such as valuing student opinions and assigning a challenging task. Through six longitudinal surveys for one year, we trace the physics identity development of 134 students from three high school physics classes as well as aspects related to physics identity construction including interest, competence beliefs, and sense of recognition. The patterns suggest that the recognizing strategies used by the teachers relate to a positive shift in students’ sense of recognition, which in turn facilitates the development of a physics identity. The postinterviews with six students from the three classes reveal possible mechanisms by which ER and IR strategies are internalized by students. Our findings indicate that the synergy with ER and IR strategies used as well as the nature of the activities (i.e., attainable success) are critical features of effective teacher recognition that can be internalized by the student.

Prior research has established that students often underprepare for midterm examinations yet remain overconfident in their proficiency. Research concerning the testing effect has demonstrated that utilizing testing as a study strategy leads to higher performance and more accurate confidence compared to more common study strategies such as rereading or reviewing homework problems. We report on three experiments that explore the viability of using computer adaptive testing (CAT) for assessing students’ physics proficiency, for preparing students for midterm exams by diagnosing their weaknesses, and for predicting scores in midterm exams in an introductory calculus-based mechanics course for science and engineering majors. The first two experiments evaluated the reliability and validity of the CAT algorithm. In addition, we investigated the ability of the CAT test to predict performance on the midterm exam. The third experiment explored whether completing two CAT tests in the days before a midterm exam would facilitate performance on the midterm exam. Scores on the CAT tests and the midterm exams were significantly correlated and, on average, were not statistically different from each other. This provides evidence for moderate parallel-forms reliability and criterion-related validity of the CAT algorithm. In addition, when used as a diagnostic tool, CAT showed promise in helping students perform better on midterm exams. Finally, we found that the CAT tests predicted the average performance on the midterm exams reasonably well, however, the CAT tests were not as accurate as desired at predicting the performance of individual students. While CAT shows promise for practice testing, more research is needed to refine testing algorithms to increase reliability before implementing CAT for summative evaluations. In light of these findings, we believe that more research is needed comparing CAT to traditional paper-and-pencil practice tests in order to determine whether the effort needed to create a CAT system is worthwhile.

Previous studies have identified physics students’ difficulties with graph slope and area under a graph in different contexts. In this study we compared physics and nonphysics (psychology) students’ understanding of graphs; i.e., we evaluated the effects of concept (graph slope vs area under graph), type of question (qualitative vs quantitative), and context (physics vs finance) on their scores, strategies, and eye-tracking data. All students solved questions about graph slope better than the questions about area under a graph. Psychology students scored rather low on the questions about area under a graph, and physics students spent more time on questions about area under a graph than on slope questions, indicating that understanding of area under a graph is quite a difficult concept that seems unlikely to develop spontaneously. Generally, physics students had comparable scores on the qualitative and quantitative questions, whereas psychology students solved qualitative questions much better. As expected, students’ scores and eye-tracking measures indicated that problems involving physics context were easier for physics students since they typically had higher scores and shorter total and axes viewing times for physics than finance questions. Some physics students may have transferred the concepts and techniques from physics to finance because they typically scored better than psychology students on the finance questions that were novel for both groups. Analysis of student strategies showed that physics students mostly relied on strategies learned in physics courses, with strong emphasis on the use of formulas, whereas psychology students mostly used common-sense strategies, as they did not know the physics formulas. The implications of the results for teaching and learning about graphs in physics courses are also discussed.

This paper reports on the results from administering a modified version of the Introductory Astronomy Questionnaire (IAQ) to middle school students and preservice science teachers in Norway. Ranking tasks formed a key part of the instrument, and we detail a new method for analyzing ranking task data. One of our main findings was that even after instruction, a significant proportion of students held erroneous views and conceptions regarding sizes, distances, and the nature of basic astronomical entities, such as stars and planets. We argue that the commonalities between some of the issues we identified and those presented in extant studies—from a variety of countries, with samples ranging from junior high school students and undergraduates to primary school teachers—may point to deeper cognitive issues inherent in, and possibly unique to, engaging with astronomy.

Discussion forums provide a channel for students to engage with peers and course material outside of class, accessible even to commuter and nontraditional populations. Forums can build classroom community and aid learning, but students do not always take up these tools. We use network analysis to compare three semesters of forum logs from an introductory calculus-based physics course. The networks show dense structures of collaboration that differ significantly between semesters, even though aggregate participation statistics remain steady. After characterizing network structure for each semester, we correlate students’ centrality—a numeric measure of network position—with final course grade. Finally, we use a backbone extraction procedure to clean up “noise” in the network and clarify centrality-grade correlations. We find that more central network positions are positively linked with course success in the two semesters with denser forum networks. Centrality is a more reliable indicator of grade than non-network measures such as postcount. Backbone extraction destroys these correlations, suggesting that the noise is in fact signal and further analysis of the discussion transcripts is required.