Our faculty members, post-docs and graduate students constitute one of the most well-known, long standing, and respected physics education research groups in the nation. We explore how people learn physics, how faculty teach it, and how institutions can create more effective learning environments for all. Our group has a broad spectrum of focus and methods used. The contexts we study span the full spectrum from introductory, to graduate, to public outreach.  Our researchers utilize both qualitative and quantitative research methods and both experimental and theoretical perspectives.

Highlights of current research and development in the group: 

Metacognition: Metacognition (a.k.a. “thinking about thinking”) is about bringing intentional reflection to how one learns best. While all students arrive with the ability to succeed, not all have the knowledge and beliefs around learning that enable them to thrive. The development of productive metacognitive ideas can greatly impact student success. We are working on both curricular development and research in this area. Specifically, we are working on continual development and implementation of a supplemental workshop to support introductory students’ metacognitive development, developing a stand-alone course for STEM students, and supporting faculty to integrate structures and activities to help students develop metacognitively. Alongside the course and curricular development we run a research program to understand the impact of these efforts and to generate a theoretical framework for future work. 

Graduate Education: Relatively little physics education research has been conducted at the graduate level. We seek to understand instructional practices of graduate faculty, conduct research on instruction that leads to better learning for graduate students, and identify structural barriers to making changes in graduate education. We also seek to identify practices and policies that graduate programs can use to more fairly admit and support physics graduate students. Additionally, we’re exploring the ways that graduate students can receive training in the non-technical skills that are important to their futures. One current project is studying why instructors who are comfortable with active learning approaches in undergraduate courses do not adopt those approaches in their graduate classes. Another project is to develop an innovative graduate TA training program and study how it affects graduate students’ perception of their professional development while they are performing their TA duties. 

Equity: Equity is about ensuring that everyone is treated fairly and has the opportunity to thrive. We are engaged in research to better understand both the underlying causes of inequality as well as finding productive systemic ways to create within physics a community where everyone feels respected, welcomed, valued and can succeed. In addition to basic equity related research we are also developing and evaluating activities to support departmental level change.

Outreach: A lot of physics education happens in informal environments, often called outreach. The formal study of learning in informal physics environments is a relatively young field, with many open questions. Our group is interested in exploring a variety of questions ranging from how attendees best learn in informal environments to the positive effects of these activities on the outreachers. 

Interdisciplinary Science Environments: Many universities around the world have realized that the practice of science often transcends the silos of traditional departments, and have created (or begun to create) interdisciplinary science courses. On this front, NC State’s Integrative Sciences Initiative is one of the most ambitious projects in the US, including interdisciplinary classes and research labs. Our group develops curriculum in support of the ISI and is studying learning in these environments. For example, we are looking at student learning in classes that are co-instructed by scientists from different disciplines. We are also learning about science identity development among interdisciplinary teams of students. 

Institutional Change: Until recently, most efforts focused on improving educational practices have focused on developing innovative instructional practices and then telling individual instructors about these new practices. These change strategies are usually not effective because instructors work in institutional and departmental systems that are not designed to support many types of innovative instruction. We are conducting research to study and develop change strategies that change cultures and structures of the systems that instructors work in. Improved systems will better support high quality instruction.  

Active Learning: A very strong and consistent finding from physics education research is that active learning instructional methods lead to better student outcomes than traditional lecture-based instructional methods. However, there have not been many studies that focus on studying the efficacy of different types of active learning compared to one-another, or identifying the types of active learning that work best in particular instructional situations. The first step of this research program is to develop ways to categorize different types of active learning instructional strategies. Historically, we have made significant contributions to the field in assessments such as TUG-K and BEMA; in curricular contributions, such as the development and implementation of the Matter and Interactions curriculum; and in originating the SCALE-UP studio classroom environment. Our faculty and graduate students have also contributed to the development of WebAssign and visualization software such as VPython and VideoGraph. The APS journal Physical Review: Physics Education Research originated here.

Join Us

We love forming new collaborations! We welcome all levels of students and visitors.  If you’re interested in joining or visiting us (short or longer term), please don’t hesitate to contact Melissa Dancy (melissa.dancy@ncsu.edu), Charles Henderson (charles_henderson@ncsu.edu), or Kasey Wagoner (kwagone@ncsu.edu). We are a highly collaborative group that values curiosity, openness, and equality.

Who are we?

Current Group Members

Name	Title	Additional Information
Anne Cox-Hicks	Teaching Professor	Contact: ajcoxhic@ncsu.edu
Melissa Dancy	Associate Professor	Research Areas: Metacognition, Institutional Reform, Equity Website: www.dancyconsulting.com Contact: melissa.dancy@ncsu.edu
Jake Hackim	Graduate Student	Dissertation Topic: Barriers to implementing active learning in graduate classes.  Contact: jchackim@ncsu.edu
Charles Henderson	Director of Interdisciplinary STEM Education, Professor	Research Areas: Institutional Change to Improve Higher Education, Active Learning and other High Quality Instructional Practices, Interdisciplinary STEM Education Website: https://sites.google.com/view/chenderson/home Contact: charles_henderson@ncsu.edu
Ben Hines	Graduate Student	Dissertation Topic:  Contact: bghines2@ncsu.edu
Maya Kinley-Hanlon	Assistant Teaching Professor	Contact: mmkinley@ncsu.edu
Stephen Lane	Assistant Teaching Professor	Contact: salane3@ncsu.edu
Aaron Titus	Teaching Professor	Contact: aptitus@ncsu.edu
Kasey Wagoner	Assistant Professor	Research Areas: Physics Outreach, Graduate Physics Education, Cosmology Contact: kwagone@ncsu.edu

Alumni

Our group was launched in 1982 when Dr. Karen Johnston was hired to establish a research group in physics education. If you are an alumni of the group and your information is missing or incorrect please reach out! 

David Abbott	Graduate Student	Dissertation: Assessing Student Understanding of Measurement and Uncertainty (2003) Current Position: Instructional Support Specialist, Buffalo State University
Rhett Allain	Graduate Student	Dissertation: Investigating the Relationship Between Student Difficulties with Electric Potential and Rate of Change (2001) Current Position: Faculty, Southeastern Louisiana State
Robert Beichner	Alumni Distinguished Undergraduate Professor	Career Highlights: Redesigning introductory physics education; his work laid the foundation for research done on active learning spaces; initiated the SCALE-UP (Student Centered Active Learning Environment with Upside-down Pedagogies) project, which led to changes in classrooms around the world, at institutions ranging from middle schools and high schools to MIT.
Scott Bonham	Post-Doc	Project: Comparison of Web- and Paper-based Homework assignments; review of Web-based education research methods
Ruth Chabay	Professor Emeritus	Career Highlights: Co-authored Matter & Interactions, which presents a restructured approach to the teaching of the first course in university physics
Colleen Countrymen	Graduate Student	Dissertation: The Educational Impact of Smartphone Implementation on Introductory Mechanics Laboratory Classes (2015) Current Position: Faculty, Ithaca College
Melissa Dancy	Graduate Student	Dissertation: Investigating Animations for Assessment with an Animated Version of the Force Concept Inventory (2000) Current Position: Faculty, NC State
Duanne Deardorff	Graduate Student	Dissertation: Introductory Physics Students’ Treatment of Measurement Uncertainty (2001) Current Position: Director of Undergraduate Labs and Teaching Faculty, UNC Chapel Hill
Paula Engelhardt	Graduate Student	Dissertation: Examining Students’ Understanding of Electrical Circuits (1997) Current Position: Faculty, Tennessee Tech University
Katie Foote	Graduate Student	Dissertation: Diffusion, Implementation and Reinvention of a University Physics Reform: The Case of SCALE-UP (2015) Current Position: Engagement Manager, Deloitte
Jon Gaffney	Graduate Student	Dissertation: Possibilities: A Framework for Modeling Students’ Deductive Reasoning in Physics (2010) Current Position: Faculty, Utica University
Karen Johnston	Professor Emeritus	Career Highlights: Founding member of the group. President of American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) 1995-96
Mary Bridget Kustusch	Graduate Student	Dissertation: Student Use and Understanding of Vector Products and Right-Hand Rules (2011) Current Position: Faculty, DePaul University
Brandon Lunk	Graduate Student	Dissertation: A Framework for Understanding Physics Students’ Computational Modeling Practices (2012) Current Position: Teaching Faculty, Texas State
John Risley	Professor Emeritus	Career Highlights: The Physics Courseware Evaluation Project, Physics Academic Software (PAS, 1989-2011), WebAssign (1997-2013)
Jeff Saul	Post-Doc	Project: Supporting SCALE-UP research and implementation.
Bruce Sherwood	Professor Emeritus	Career Highlights: Co-author of Matter & Interactions; innovative uses of computers in physics education, including creation of the cT programming language and participation in the development of the 3D programming environment Vpython; seminal writings on work and energy in classical mechanics
Aaron Titus	Graduate Student	Dissertation: Integrating Video and Animation with Physics Problem-Solving Exercises on the World Wide Web (1998) Current Position: Teaching Faculty, NC State
Shawn Weatherford	Graduate Student	Dissertation: Student Use of Physics to Make Sense of Incomplete but Functional VPython Programs in a Lab Setting (2011) Current Position: Teaching Faculty, University of Florida
Bin Xiao	Graduate Student	Dissertation: Examining End-Of-Chapter Problems Across Editions of an Introductory Calculus-Based Physics Textbook (2016) Current Position: Teaching Faculty, University of Mississippi