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Welcome to The Physics Education Research Laboratory

Our interests include

  • how students learn physics
  • student understanding of specific physics concepts
  • the use of mathematics in physics learning
  • curriculum development and dissemination
  • models and mechanisms of human reasoning
  • teacher professional development

Recent activities

  • investigating student understanding of the interface between mathematics and physics
  • research and curriculum development in upper-division thermodynamics and statistical mechanics
  • developing and disseminating the Intermediate Mechanics Tutorials
  • developing and disseminating a course on Intuitive Quantum Physics
  • theory development within the resources framework, a knowledge-in-pieces approach to describing student reasoning
  • developing and assessing courses on teaching and learning in physics for future secondary science teachers and university faculty; research on the interplay between specialized content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in physics
  • co-organizing the Foundations and Frontiers of Physics Education Research conference

What’s happening this week
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