The Force Concept Inventory (FCI), one of the most widely used tools in the physics community, is commonly used as a pre and posttest assessment to gauge the effectiveness of various teaching strategies. Over the years there have been various studies on the FCI itself, and different formats have been created. In this preliminary study we are looking at the incorporation of videos that illustrate the problem statements as a way to see if these additions have positive effects on students' responses to FCI questions. We took a subset of four questions from the FCI and varied the format of the questions and videos in quizzes administered to multiple introductory algebra-based physics courses. Though there were no quantitatively significant differences in students' performance on questions between those who answered the as-written FCI questions versus the questions with the videos, we found significant differences on some questions with repeated responses to the same questions with and without video. Furthermore, students overall felt the videos helped them visualize the question scenarios.

This study investigated the belief that student attention declines after the first 10 to 15 min of class by analyzing vigilance decrement in a guided inquiry physical science course. We used Tobii Glasses, a portable eye tracker, to record student gaze during class sessions. Undergraduate students (n = 17) representative of course demographics (14 female, 3 male) wore the eye tracker during 70-min classes (n = 84) or 50-min classes (n = 26). From the gaze point and fixation data, we coded participant attention as either on-task or off-task for every second of data. This analysis resulted in a percentage of vigilance time on task for each minute as well as the amount of time that participants spent looking in various locations during the class sessions. Participants exhibited on-task vigilance percentages starting with 67% at the start of class and rising to an average of above 90% on-task vigilance at the 7 to 9-min mark with minor fluctuation. Contrary to the belief that attention declines rapidly during a class, the participants on-task spans were larger and more numerous than their off-task spans. These results seem to support the conclusion that well-structured classes punctuated by student-student and instructor-student interactions can be an effective method of maintaining student attention vigilance for entire class sessions, not just the first 10 min.

In 2010, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) called for colleges and universities to "turn teacher education upside down" (pg. 2) and focus on clinical experiences, rather than coursework. This charge resulted in major shifts in teacher education programs in the USA as colleges and universities forged new partnerships to create yearlong clinical experiences that included co-teaching and coaching. In 2018, the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) Commission on Clinical Experiences recognized and described the mutual benefits of expanding these partnerships between schools and universities to include various forms of collaboration, co-teaching and coaching. While these partnerships are increasing in number, little is known about the efficacy of the specific coaching approaches and practices employed in the co-taught classroom. This self-study examined the communication and behavioral approaches of 13 co-teaching coaches who collaborated with 39 teacher candidates enrolled in yearlong, co-taught P-12 clinical experiences. The co-teaching coaches attended up to four sessions of professional learning on co-teaching and coaching. Basic statistics were used to determine the demographics, the content of the coaching conversations, and preferred coaching approaches. The main data sources were the coaches’ resumes, their reflections on goal-setting sessions, observation reports, and surveys on their daily coaching activities. Results indicated that effective coaches engaged in collaborative dialogue that moved candidates to self-directed learning. Similarly, these results described the pedagogical practices of effective coaches in terms of goal-setting with the candidates, basic mentoring, and demonstration teaching.

My first year teaching physical science I (LB) had a young man whom we shall call John in class. He had been sitting silently, doing nothing most of the first quarter of school. I had seen little in the way of written work from him. John's daily grades were continually zero after zero and his assessment grades were equally abysmal. Calls to mom and dad had been fruitless, with them explaining that he struggled with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and had a hard time writing because of that. I puzzled over what to do with this student. I asked his parents if I could get him to come in early one Thursday. When he arrived I asked him to copy a text for me, read it to me aloud, and discuss it with me one to one. He sat there with a blank stare. I asked him what was wrong and all he responded with was "I can't write!" I told him he could write and to try it, to rest assured that it wasn't being graded. He began and within a few moments I knew. He could not write because he had dysgraphia. His attempt at writing was chaotic. Words were scattered about the page haphazardly, their placement had no logical sequence, and made no sense in light of the content he had read. According to the Learning Disabilities Association of America, "A person with this specific learning disability may have problems including illegible handwriting, inconsistent spacing, poor spatial planning on paper, poor spelling, and difficulty composing writing as well as thinking and writing at the same time."

Some educators use what we call a "hook" as a key element in their lessons. We use "hooks" to get our students interested in what it is we are teaching. Many teachers have adopted the Next Generation Science Standards and establish the phenomena as the engine that drives scientific investigation and learning in the classroom. We use phenomena to illustrate the melding of real-world scientific investigation, research, and practices with science teaching found in middle and high school settings. Interested students are more motivated, curious, and attentive. This increases the likelihood that they will not only learn the material to a greater degree, but also retain the information longer. A wider variety and volume of phenomena provides more hooks, which in turn increases the instructor's ability to deliver an engaging lesson that immerses students in the core ideas of the scientific process.

If a person were to observe my classroom when I taught high school physics, he or she would find the traditional labs with the lectures, notes, and problems to solve that enhanced understanding. As I became more skilled in my profession, I promoted inquiry and critical thinking skills. However, the necessity was never obvious to me, nor was I ever taught how, to address social inequity in physics (let alone did I fully understand it myself). Why was that? My job was to teach concepts such as momentum, forces, inertia, circuits, etc. This list goes on and on. It wasn’t until years later in my career that I began to understand the importance of bringing social inequities in physics to the front of the classroom. It started to become obvious I needed to do something at least in my own classroom when I had difficulties highlighting anyone in physics who was not White and not male. Though this was never my intent while teaching, I believe I helped maintain this social inequity, and perpetuate the idea that phy...

If a person were to observe my classroom when I taught high school physics, he or she would find the traditional labs with the lectures, notes, and problems to solve that enhanced understanding. As I became more skilled in my profession, I promoted inquiry and critical thinking skills. However, the necessity was never obvious to me, nor was I ever taught how, to address social inequity in physics (let alone did I fully understand it myself). Why was that? My job was to teach concepts such as momentum, forces, inertia, circuits, etc. This list goes on and on. It wasn’t until years later in my career that I began to understand the importance of bringing social inequities in physics to the front of the classroom. It started to become obvious I needed to do something at least in my own classroom when I had difficulties highlighting anyone in physics who was not White and not male. Though this was never my intent while teaching, I believe I helped maintain this social inequity, and perpetuate the idea that phy...

Efforts to improve the number and quality of the high school physics teaching workforce have taken several forms, including those sponsored by professional organizations. Using a series of large-scale teacher demographic data sets from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), this study sought to investigate trends in teacher quality at the national level in the two and a half decades between 1987 and 2012. Specifically, we investigated (i) details about the degree backgrounds, main teaching assignments, and experience levels of those assigned to teach physics; (ii) whether the proportion of those with certifications in physics as a fraction of the entire physics teaching workforce had changed; and (iii) if workforce diversity (with respect to race and gender) had changed over time. Our data indicate that trends in these domains have generally been positive, but still fall short of having a highly qualified physics teacher in each classroom. Additionally, the population of physics teachers has more novices and fewer veterans than it did 10 years ago, although veteran physics teachers are not as rare as those in other branches of high school STEM fields. We also analyzed trends in physics teacher race and gender diversity and found them to lag behind other STEM and non-STEM teacher communities. High school physics is still mostly taught by white males with backgrounds from outside of physics. Implications for future policy decisions at the local and national levels are discussed, including attending to the specific needs of degree-holding and non-degree-holding physics teachers separately and localizing teacher recruitment and preparation efforts in regional centers.

Physics education researchers have had a strong impact on how professors teach physics and physical science courses. Faculty can find an instructional strategy to match their personal philosophies, yet how do students pay attention in those classes? There is the old belief that you have your students’ attention for the first 15 minutes of class but after that their attention declines. Researchers have studied student attention in the past but have not used an eye-tracker to truly capture what students look at during class. This study is the first to introduce eye-trackers to investigate student attention in a lecture or more accurately a large group instruction environment. I conducted this study in the fall and the spring semester of a physical science course. One student in each class wore an eye-tracker. I found that the first 15 minute adage is not necessarily true. Over the course of an entire class students have the ability to stay on-task fairly consistently.

This study investigates the gaze patterns of undergraduate college students attending a lecture-based physical science class to better understand the relationships between gaze and focus patterns and student attention during class. The investigators used a new eye-tracking product; Tobii Glasses. The glasses eliminate the need for subjects to focus on a computer screen or carry around a backpack-sized recording device, thus giving an investigator the ability to study a broader range of research questions. This investigation includes what students focus on in the classroom (i.e. demonstrations, instructor, notes, board work, and presentations) during a normal lecture, what diverts attention away from being on task as well as what keeps a subject on task. We report on the findings from 8 subjects during physical science lectures designed for future elementary school teachers. We found that students tended not to focus on the instructor for most parts of the lecture but rather the information, particularly new information presented on PowerPoint slides. Finally, we found that location in the classroom also impacted students' attention spans due to more distractors.

Eye-tracking has been widely used for research purposes in fields such as linguistics and marketing. However, there are many possibilities of how eye-trackers could be used in other disciplines like physics. A part of physics education research deals with the differences between novices and experts, specifically how each group solves problems. Though there has been a great deal of research about these differences there has been no research that focuses on noticing exactly where experts and novices look while solving the problems. Thus, to complement the past research, I have created a new technique called gaze scribing. Subjects wear a head mounted eye-tracker while solving electrical circuit problems on a graphics monitor. I monitor both scan patterns of the subjects and combine that with videotapes of their work while solving the problems. This new technique has yielded new information and elaborated on previous studies.

Multiple representations are a valuable tool to help students learn and understand physics concepts.1 Furthermore, representations help students learn how to think and act like real scientists.2 These representations include: pictures, free-body diagrams,3 energy bar charts,4 electrical circuits, and, more recently, computer simulations and animations.5 However, instructors have limited choices when they want to help their students understand impulse and momentum. One of the only available options is the impulse-momentum bar chart.6 The bar charts can effectively show the magnitude of the momentum as well as help students understand conservation of momentum, but they do not easily show the actual direction. This paper highlights a new representation instructors can use to help their students with momentum and impulse—the impulse-momentum diagram (IMD).

Design activities, when embedded in an inquiry cycle and appropriately scaffolded and supplemented with reflection, can promote the development of the habits of mind (scientific abilities) that are an important part of scientific practice. Through the Investigative Science Learning Environment (ISLE), students construct physics knowledge by engaging in inquiry cycles that replicate the approach used by physicists to construct knowledge. A significant portion of student learning occurs in ISLE instructional labs where students design their own experiments. The labs provide an environment for cognitive apprenticeship enhanced by formative assessment. As a result, students develop interpretive knowing that helps them approach new problems as scientists. This article describes a classroom study in which the students in the ISLE design lab performed equally well on traditional exams as ISLE students who did not engage in design activities. However, the design group significantly outperformed the non-design group while working on novel experimental tasks (in physics and biology), demonstrating the application of scientific abilities to an inquiry task in a novel content domain. This research shows that a learning environment that integrates cognitive apprenticeship and formative assessment in a series of conceptual design tasks provides a rich context for helping students build scientific habits of mind.

Training pre‐service teachers requires, among other things, content knowledge, pedagogical skills and pedagogical content knowledge. Teacher preparation programs have little, if any spare time to add more courses/activities to their program. However, I argue in this paper that we, as educators, must enhance the amount of physics education research in our pre‐service physics teacher training programs. In this study, I analyze the results of two different types of exposure to physics education research (PER) from two different groups of pre‐service physics teachers in our masters of arts and teaching program. The preliminary results show, for example that the PER helped the pre‐service teachers increase their understanding of student thought processes while they solved problems. Physics teachers must have this type of ability to be successful in the classroom.

Physics education literature recommends using multiple representations to help students understand concepts and solve problems. However, there is little research concerning why students use the representations and whether those who use them are more successful. This study addresses these questions using free-body diagrams (diagrammatic representations used in problems involving forces) as a type of representation. We conducted a two-year quantitative and qualitative study of students' use of free-body diagrams while solving physics problems. We found that when students are in a course that consistently emphasizes the use of free-body diagrams, the majority of them do use diagrams on their own to help solve exam problems even when they receive no credit for drawing the diagrams. We also found that students who draw diagrams correctly are significantly more successful in obtaining the right answer for the problem. Lastly, we interviewed students to uncover their reasons for using free-body diagrams. We found that high achieving students used the diagrams to help solve the problems and as a tool to evaluate their work while low achieving students only used representations as aids in the problem-solving process.