Statistical mechanics has received limited attention in physics education research and remains a relatively underrepresented topic even in research on upper-division physics courses. The purpose of this study was to explore potential challenges that physics students encounter when they solve statistical mechanics problems in groups. Adopting a…

In these times, described as an ´post-truth´ era where we are faced with information overload, it is a challenge to help students find relevant information, support their knowledge building and engage them in thinking critically about information and knowledge from different perspectives. This study investigates how a visual analytics interface…

This study explores first-year university students' reasoning as they learn to draw Lewis structures. We also present a theoretical account of the formal procedure commonly taught for drawing these structures. Students' discussions during problem-solving activities were video recorded and detailed analyses of the discussions were made through the…

A growing body of research has examined the experiential grounding of scientific thought and the role of experiential intuitive knowledge in science learning. Meanwhile, research in cognitive linguistics has identified many "conceptual metaphors" (CMs), metaphorical mappings between abstract concepts and experiential source domains,…

It is suggested that a reader's idea structure will affect processing of incoming information. Two aspects of the idea structure are further developed--the truth value aspect and the analytic level aspect. The idea structure can be characterized by ideas consisting of propositions which are considered to be more or less true or false (beliefs), or…