This paper presents a comprehensive synthesis of physics education research at the
undergraduate level. It is based on work originally commissioned by the National …

Physics faculty, experts in evidence-based research, often rely on anecdotal experience to
guide their teaching practices. Adoption of research-based instructional strategies is …

Because of the focus of introductory physics courses on improving students' problem-solving
and reasoning skills, researchers in physics education have been developing and refining …

Previous research into problem solving in physics resulted in researchers introducing six
epistemic games to describe the organizational structures of locally coherent resources. We …

We investigate learning difficulties among second-year students in electromagnetism
courses when they apply Ampère-Maxwell's law. Using phenomenography, we analyzed …

This paper presents improvements made to a computerized adaptive testing (CAT)-based
version of the FCI (FCI-CAT) in regards to test security and test efficiency. First, we will …

Nonexperts often exhibit regular and persistent patterns of errors when answering questions
about science concepts. Typically, these patterns are considered to be due to high-level …

We investigate student confusion of concepts of electric and magnetic force. At various times
during a traditional university-level course, we administered a series of simple questions …

The ability to solve physics problems that require multiple concepts from across the physics
curriculum—“synthesis” problems—is often a goal of physics instruction. Three experiments …

A common narrative in physics education research is that students taught in lecture-based
classes learn less than those taught with activity-based reformed methods. We show this …