Teaching quantum physics (QP) to high school (HS) students is gaining momentum, necessitating the exploration of various effective methods. Specifically, the research on quantitative teaching methods is still in its early stages. Understanding the power of Dirac notation (DN) in teaching is crucial for grasping the complexities of QP, as it…

Inquiry practices can be integrated into various settings that differ in terms of their constraints and hence in the scope and depth of the practices that students experience. Key policy papers suggest implementing a gradual learning sequence for inquiry practices so that students' learning experiences in more constrained settings can serve them…

Circus art excites amazes and delights. Most of circus genres are based on the principles of classical physics. Dialogic discussions are known as an instrument to identify conceptual barriers (misconceptions) and facilitate their further revision. The present study integrates the three worlds: physics education, dialogic teaching and circus art;…

Sound is one of the most commonly used physical phenomena that most of us use without considering its nature. Moreover, students often face difficulties in understanding acoustic phenomena, the most frequent one of which is the substance-based view of sound instead of a process of pressure and density differences. The current study introduces…

The instructional lab setting has been found to be dominated by prescribed tasks and pre-prepared lab kits. This was explained by teachers' need to guide students to simultaneously progress through a lab curriculum, which prompts them to standardize the lab experience. Nevertheless, prominent professional associations have persistently called to…

Background: Discourse is the teacher's principal pedagogical tool in class. Studies stress the importance of research on discourse in science education and demonstrate its cruciality for understanding science. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate characteristics of the classroom discourse in lessons on physics. Sample: Classroom…

We describe the design rationale and structure of a Methods for Teaching Physics course that was redesigned as a project-based learning (PBL) environment, and the entailed learning process it fostered. The projects consisted of the design and teaching of physics lessons with predefined content and pedagogical focus and were structured as a guided…

Troubleshooting activities require students to diagnose teacher-crafted erroneous examples by detecting and explaining the conceptual errors driving them. In a previous study, the author tested whether diagnosing erroneous examples and then scoring them using a rubric that contained the related worked examples, a step-by-step strategy to solve a…

We suggest an activity for measuring the speed of a bicycle going in circular motion by measuring the bicycle's lean angle. In this activity students will be able to feel the strength that is being activated on their bodies while they are moving in circular motion. They will also understand that it is impossible to ride in a circle without the…

In the past three decades in high-income countries, female students have outperformed male students in most indicators of educational attainment. However, the underrepresentation of girls and women in science courses and careers, especially in physics, computer sciences, and engineering, remains persistent. What is often neglected by the vast…

The goal of this research is to provide a rich set of connections between two fields: (i) Nanoscale science and technology (NST) and (ii) topics from a common middle school physics curriculum. NST is emerging as one of the most promising new fields of the 21st century, which is one of the many arguments for including NST topics in secondary…

This case study examined the characteristics of classroom discourse during physics lessons in two single-sex high school classes--a boys' vs. a girls' class. All lessons were taught by the same teacher and covered the same topics. For each class, six lessons were recorded, transcribed, and coded and the characteristics of the discussion were…

STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields are in high demand for qualified personnel worldwide, yet drop-out rates of a career path in STEM occur at various points in lifespan. Based on a big-data analysis of 534,590 records retrieved from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics for several points in time over one and a half…

The present study describes the development and field testing of a simple apparatus-based diagnostic instrument (SABDI) that examines undergraduate students' understanding of the underlying physics principles that explain how simple acoustic apparatuses work. SABDI comprises 13 items. Based on previous research studies and the history of science,…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Curriculum Development: Theory into Design.] We discuss the theoretical underpinnings that informed the considerations and decisions that shaped the design of a curriculum unit entitled "Electromagnetic radiation--principles, applications, and decisions". This unit is part (45 h) of the…