Little research in physics education focuses on graduate student experiences related to structural elements of their programs. This departmental case study examines the impact and perceptions of written qualifying exams (QEs) from a student perspective, following recent research which questions the role and utility of such exams. We conducted…

One way to bring about change in higher education is to introduce professional development programs for higher education, however these programs have been found to be ineffective at promoting positive change for individuals and departments. To address the need for better programs, I worked on two projects: one project attempts to identify a way to…

This dissertation brings together two research strands that study: (a) the ways in which physics and STEM students contribute to growing capacity for institutional change within collaborative teams and (b) the support structures of graduate programs through an innovative methodology grounded in network science. The first research strand is…

Over the last decade, course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) have been recognized as a way to improve undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education by engaging students in authentic discovery. CUREs have been shown to have positive benefits similar to traditional undergraduate research experiences;…

Leaders, policymakers, and researchers have called attention to the need to improve critical aspects of physics programs, from teaching and pedagogy to making physics more diverse and equitable. As such programmatic changes are challenging and require a second-order change to be effective, many physics faculty responsible for carrying them out are…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Instructional labs: Improving traditions and new directions.] Physics instructional labs have long been an area of pedagogical innovation and educational research. While current stakeholders in instructional labs are undoubtedly aware of the day's concerns, reform efforts, and empirical research…

Although physics education researchers often use workshops to promote instructional change in higher education, little research has been done to investigate workshop design. Initial evidence suggests that many workshop sessions focus primarily on raising faculty's awareness of research-based instructional strategies, a fairly straightforward goal…

Practical work is a distinctive feature of school science and has close associations with scientific experiment and scientific methods as well. In this study, the nature of practical work was examined in the view of the diversity of scientific methods. Based on an analytical framework derived from Brandon's matrix consisting of four categories of…

This book offers a remarkable range of research that emphasises the need to analyse the shaping of curricula under historical, social and political variables. Teachers' life stories, the Cold War as a contextual element that framed curricular transformations in the US and Europe, and the study of trends in education policy at transnational level…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore students' perceptions to changes to the learning environment of their undergraduate physics laboratories, in which their scientific inquiry processes were stimulated. Design/methodology/approach: The activities students engaged in were redesigned to reflect a guided inquiry approach and to…

This paper analyses shifts in the representation of history and physics as named organisational units on Australian university websites over the last 15 years in the context of broader questions about the production of knowledge in contemporary times. It derives from a broader project concerned with disciplinarity, changing university contexts and…

Over the past few decades, a growing body of evidence demonstrates that students learn best in engaging, interactive, collaborative, and inquiry-based environments. However, most college science classes are still taught with traditional methods suggesting the existing selection of research-based instructional materials has not widely transformed…

Background/Context: Education scholars have examined how state policy and informal practice can widen or reproduce racial and gender inequalities in graduate education. Just one empirical study, which focused on psychology programs, has identified organizational practice that supports recruitment and retention of graduate students of color. Focus…

The aim of this study was to explore physics teachers' ramification of theory and practices as a result of physics content and pedagogical changes in the Further Education and Training (FET) phase. The researchers adopted the mixed method research approach. The quantitative aspect involved 109 physics teachers and the qualitative approach used ten…

The SCALE-UP studio physics class involves the physical redesign of a classroom to encourage more collaborative interactions and student-centered teaching, an approach shown to increase student learning on several different measures. However, research into the contextual issues involved in implementing a studio course using the SCALE-UP model…