In order to benefit from our physics education community's knowledge, we must have access to our community. To facilitate access, researchers, including K-12 teachers, share their studies and findings through publications in peer reviewed journals and books. The resource links below offer a window into research about active physics learning and student reasoning.
For a brief introduction to physics education research, you may wish to browse Chapter One of Edward "Joe" Redish's book. His discussion coincides with the pedogogy and curricular tools the Physics Academies brought forth.
The above link will take you to a list of articles concerned with student reasoning, mainly with regard to computer based labs. This material supplies some of the what's and why's behind RealTime Physics (Sokoloff et al, 1998).
Although the Tufts site only allows you to view abstracts, if you would like more, you may request copies of articles from Tufts' Center for Science and Mathematics Teaching. In addition, you will find the source article for the Force and Motion Concept Evaluation (FMCE).
You may also be interested in reading a brief synopsis about the study population for these computer based labs. (You may need to scroll down to #3 under "How do we know what is needed in schools and universities?" to find what you're looking for.)
ASU's modeling physics site gives full access to a series of David Hestenes articles dating back to the beginnning of the modeling instructional trend in the mid-1980's.
For more high school-specific modeling information go to ASU's modeling physics for high school site.
The above ABT site offers several articles ranging from an overview of Physics Education Research to thoughts on how well computer based labs help teachers address core Newtonian concepts within their classrooms.
The above link goes directly to the DIAGNOSER login page. Unfortunately we can't offer direct links to published facets research behind the DIAGNOSER software.
For a list of reference articles, please go to the DIAGNOSER site, login as a teacher, and click on the Help & Info tab.
For an overview of DIAGNOSER, we have created a separate page for you.
The link above will take you to the University of Colorado's research on the effectiveness of their interactive simulations for teaching introductory physics.
It will also help you gain more insight into why they have done what they have and the corresponding effects on student learning.
