Physical Review ST Accel. and Beams

Teaching assistants’ beliefs regarding example solutions in introductory physics
Author(s): Shih-Yin Lin, Charles Henderson, William Mamudi, Chandralekha Singh, and Edit YerushalmiAs part of a larger study to understand instructors’ considerations regarding the learning and teachi …
Reappraising the relationships between physics students’ mental models and predictions: An example of heat convection
Author(s): Guo-Li ChiouAlthough prediction is claimed to be a prime function of mental models, to what extent students can run their mental models to make predictions of physical phenomena remains unc …
Relativity concept inventory: Development, analysis, and results
Author(s): J. S. Aslanides and C. M. SavageWe report on a concept inventory for special relativity: the development process, data analysis methods, and results from an introductory relativity class. T …
Students’ epistemological beliefs, expectations, and learning physics: An international comparison
Author(s): Sapna Sharma, P. K. Ahluwalia, and S. K. SharmaIt has been established by physics education researchers that there is a correlation between the learner’s behavior, their epistemological bel …
Introducing Taiwanese undergraduate students to the nature of science through Nobel Prize stories
Author(s): Haim Eshach, Fu-Kwun Hwang, Hsin-Kai Wu, and Ying-Shao HsuAlthough there is a broad agreement among scientists and science educators that students should not only learn science, but also ac …
Exploring the context of change: Understanding the kinetics of a studio physics implementation effort
Author(s): Patrick J. Enderle, Sherry A. Southerland, and Jonathon A. GroomsThe SCALE-UP studio physics class involves the physical redesign of a classroom to encourage more collaborative interactions …
Female physicist doctoral experiences
Author(s): Katherine P. Dabney and Robert H. TaiThe underrepresentation of women in physics doctorate programs and in tenured academic positions indicates a need to evaluate what may influence their c …
Education majors’ expectations and reported experiences with inquiry-based physics: Implications for student affect
Author(s): Jon D. H. GaffneyTo address a perennial need to provide K-8 teachers with a solid foundation in science, there are many physics content courses throughout the United States. One such course …
Validating two questions in the Force Concept Inventory with subquestions
Author(s): Jun-ichiro Yasuda and Masa-aki TaniguchiIn this study, we evaluate the structural validity of Q.16 and Q.7 in the Force Concept Inventory (FCI). We address whether respondents who answer Q. …
Transitions in students’ epistemic framing along two axes
Author(s): Paul W. Irving, Mathew Sandy Martinuk, and Eleanor C. SayreWe use epistemological framing to interpret participants’ behavior during group problem-solving sessions in an intermediate mechan …
Large-scale survey of Chinese precollege students’ epistemological beliefs about physics: A progression or a regression?
Author(s): Ping Zhang and Lin DingThis paper reports a cross-grade comparative study of Chinese precollege students’ epistemological beliefs about physics by using the Colorado Learning Attitudes Surv …
Variation of instructor-student interactions in an introductory interactive physics course
Author(s): Emily A. West, Cassandra A. Paul, David Webb, and Wendell H. PotterThe physics instruction at UC Davis for life science majors takes place in a long-standing reformed large-enrollment physi …
Epistemic game for answer making in learning about hydrostatics
Author(s): Ying Chen, Paul W. Irving, and Eleanor C. SayrePrevious research into problem solving in physics resulted in researchers introducing six epistemic games to describe the organizational struc …
Student difficulties measuring distances in terms of wavelength: Lack of basic skills or failure to transfer?
Author(s): Mila Kryjevskaia, MacKenzie R. Stetzer, and Paula R. L. HeronIn a previous paper that focused on the transmission of periodic waves at the boundary between two media, we documented difficul …
Categorization of first-year university students’ interpretations of numerical linear distance-time graphs
Author(s): Thomas Wemyss and Paul van KampenWe have investigated the various approaches taken by first-year university students (n≈550) when asked to determine the direction of motion, the constancy o …
Problem-solving rubrics revisited: Attending to the blending of informal conceptual and formal mathematical reasoning
Author(s): Michael M. Hull, Eric Kuo, Ayush Gupta, and Andrew ElbyMuch research in engineering and physics education has focused on improving students’ problem-solving skills. This research has led to …
Does using a visual-representation tool foster students’ ability to identify forces and construct free-body diagrams?
Author(s): Antti Savinainen, Asko Mäkynen, Pasi Nieminen, and Jouni ViiriEarlier research has shown that after physics instruction, many students have difficulties with the force concept, and with con …
New approach to analyzing physics problems: A Taxonomy of Introductory Physics Problems
Author(s): Raluca E. Teodorescu, Cornelius Bennhold, Gerald Feldman, and Larry MedskerThis paper describes research on a classification of physics problems in the context of introductory physics cours …
Improving student understanding of addition of angular momentum in quantum mechanics
Author(s): Guangtian Zhu and Chandralekha SinghWe describe the difficulties advanced undergraduate and graduate students have with concepts related to addition of angular momentum in quantum mechanics …
Preservice teachers’ objectives and their experience of practical work
Author(s): V. Nivalainen, M. A. Asikainen, and P. E. HirvonenThis study explores third-year preservice physics teachers’ (n=32) views concerning the objectives of practical work at school and universi …
Announcement: PRST-PER Editors’ Suggestions
Author(s): [Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 9, 010001] Published Wed Jan 02, 2013
Visualization of longitudinal student data
Author(s): Anthony J. Bendinelli and M. MarderWe use visualization to find patterns in educational data. We represent student scores from high-stakes exams as flow vectors in fluids, define two types …
What do seniors remember from freshman physics?
Author(s): Andrew Pawl, Analia Barrantes, David E. Pritchard, and Rudolph MitchellWe have given a group of 56 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) seniors who took mechanics as freshmen a writt …
Representation use and strategy choice in physics problem solving
Author(s): Mieke De CockIn this paper, we examine student success on three variants of a test item given in different representational formats (verbal, pictorial, and graphical), with an isomorphic pr …
Rigging the deck: Selecting good problems for expert-novice card-sorting experiments
Author(s): Steven F. Wolf, Daniel P. Dougherty, and Gerd KortemeyerA seminal study by Chi et al. firmly established the paradigm that novices categorize physics problems by “surface features” (e.g., “ …
Representing energy. I. Representing a substance ontology for energy
Author(s): Rachel E. Scherr, Hunter G. Close, Sarah B. McKagan, and Stamatis VokosThe nature of energy is not typically an explicit topic of physics instruction. Nonetheless, verbal and graphical repr …
Representing energy. II. Energy tracking representations
Author(s): Rachel E. Scherr, Hunter G. Close, Eleanor W. Close, and Stamatis VokosThe Energy Project at Seattle Pacific University has developed representations that embody the substance metaphor and …
Development and implications of technology in reform-based physics laboratories
Author(s): Sufen Chen, Hao-Chang Lo, Jing-Wen Lin, Jyh-Chong Liang, Hsin-Yi Chang, Fu-Kwun Hwang, Guo-Li Chiou, Ying-Tien Wu, Silvia Wen-Yu Lee, Hsin-Kai Wu, Chia-Yu Wang, and Chin-Chung TsaiTechnolog …
Using cluster analysis to identify patterns in students’ responses to contextually different conceptual problems
Author(s): John Stewart, Mayo Miller, Christine Audo, and Gay StewartThis study examined the evolution of student responses to seven contextually different versions of two Force Concept Inventory ques …
Identifying events that impact self-efficacy in physics learning
Author(s): Vashti Sawtelle, Eric Brewe, Renee Michelle Goertzen, and Laird H. KramerWe present a method of analyzing the development of self-efficacy in real time using a framework of self-efficacy op …