OOIR: Observatory of International Research

Papers

(The TQCC of Physical Review Physics Education Research is 7. The table below lists those papers that are above that threshold based on CrossRef citation counts [max. 250 papers]. The publications cover those that have been published in the past four years, i.e., from 2022-05-01 to 2026-05-01.)

Article	Citations
Recognizing dominant cultures around assessment and educational change in physics programs	142
Do students think that objects have a true definite position?	90
Motivation, demographics, and engagement during COVID-19 in an astrobiology massive open online course	83
Leveraging scientific modeling to engage pre-med undergraduates in physics lab courses	75
Other spaces for young women’s identity work in physics: Resources accessed through university-adjacent informal physics learning contexts in Sweden	74
Open-inquiry opens doors to intriguing optics experiments at home: A case study	62
Student attitudes toward quantum information science and technology in a high school outreach program	53
Astronomy identity framework for undergraduate students and researchers	53
Combining physics education and machine learning research to measure evidence of students’ mechanistic sensemaking	52
Implementation of the photovoice methodology in a project-based upper-division physics course	52
Extending curricular analytics to analyze undergraduate physics programs	37
Metacognition and epistemic cognition in physics are related to physics identity through the mediation of physics self-efficacy	35
Group dynamics in inquiry-based labs: Gender inequities and the efficacy of partner agreements	29
Contributing factors to the improvement of conceptual understanding in a computer-based intervention in Newtonian dynamics	29
Exploring gender differences in the Force Concept Inventory using a random effects meta-analysis of international studies	28
Do female and male students’ physics motivational beliefs change in a two-semester introductory physics course sequence?	26
Comparison of men and women’s motivation of choosing physics teaching or nonteaching trajectory	25
Editorial: Call for Papers for Focused Collection of Physical Review Physics Education Research : Investigating and Improving Quantum Education through Research	24
Improving student understanding of the number of distinct many-particle states for a system of identical particles with a fixed number of available single-particle states	24
Development of a multiple-choice test to assess critical thinking in climate change	23
Psychometric evaluation of the culture around systemic change survey: A tool for assessing facets of departmental culture in physics	22
Distinguishing between students’ conceptual understanding and reasoning approaches: An application of dual-process theories	21
Teachers’ experiences with taking an open-ended approach in teaching labs in high school physics classes	20
Students’ understanding of the 2D heat equation: An action, process, object, schema approach	19
Second quantum revolution: The progressive design of an approach to value its cultural and conceptual scope	19

Development of a global landscape of undergraduate physics laboratory courses	18
Impact of inquiry-based teaching and group composition on students’ understanding of the nature of science in college physics laboratory	18
Collaborative physics teachers: Enhancing the use of the laboratory through action research in a community of learners	18
Problem solving in basic physics: Effective self-explanations based on four elements with support from retrieval practice	18
Bridging the novice-expert gap: The role of inhibitory control and interventions in overcoming buoyancy misconceptions	17
Central role of personnel in informal physics programming	17
Evaluating IBM’s Watson natural language processing artificial intelligence as a short-answer categorization tool for physics education research	17
Using drawing to study student research experiences	17
Modeling when and how physics Ph.D. students search for a research group: The role of interests and prior research experiences in timely group integration	17
Guiding principles for change in undergraduate education: An analysis of a departmental team’s change effort	17
Qualitative investigation of students’ cross-disciplinary understanding of energy concepts	16
Reply to “Comment on ‘Examining the effect of counternarratives about physics on women’s physics career intentions’ ”	16
Characterizing decision-making opportunities in undergraduate physics coursework	15
Characterizing discourse group roles in inquiry-based university science labs	15
Nature of heat inventory: Assessing student understanding of thermal processes in kinetic molecular terms	15
Towards mapping the landscape of informal physics educational activities	15
Exploratory analysis of students’ open-ended responses describing their perception of course inclusivity in an introductory physics course	15
Long and winding road toward change in teachers’ goals and orientations in the instructional lab	15
Test of understanding of electric field, force, and flux: A reliable multiple-choice assessment tool	15
Gaze patterns enhance response prediction: More than correct or incorrect	15
Assessing physics quantitative literacy development in algebra-based physics	14
Development and validation of a conceptual multiple-choice survey instrument to assess student understanding of introductory thermodynamics	14
Expert perspectives on the future of quantum physics education at the secondary level	13
Investigating the efficacy of attending to reflexive cognitive processes in the context of Newton’s second law	13
Making context explicit in equation construction and interpretation: Symbolic blending	13
Effect of group type on group performance in peer-collaborated two-round physics problem solving	13
Effect of representation format on conceptual question performance and eye-tracking measures	13
Leveraging generative artificial intelligence for simulation-based physics experiments: A new approach to virtual learning about the real world	13
Investigating the impact of problem properties on introductory and advanced student responses to introductory thermodynamics conceptual problems	12
Motivation and needs of informal physics practitioners	12
Taking introductory physics in studio, lecture, or online format: What difference does it make in subsequent courses, and for whom?	12
Modern physics courses: Understanding the content taught in the U.S.	12
Physics demonstrations, science show, or hands-on practical work? Exploring students’ intrinsic motivation	12
Development and reliability analysis of a split-administration test of the math epistemic games survey	12
Unveiling the influence of pedagogical content knowledge in questioning on college students’ conceptual learning of introductory physics	12
Mandatory retrieval test to incentivize retrieval practice of physics principles	12
Designing e-learning courses for classroom and distance learning in physics: The role of learning tasks	12
Assessment of conceptual understanding in student learning of evaporation	12
Encouraging students to understand the 1D wave equation	11
Analyzing identity trajectories within the physics community	11
Does the dog in the car have kinetic energy? A multiage case study in the challenges of conceptual change	11
Self-efficacy and conceptual knowledge in quantum mechanics during teaching reforms and the COVID-19 pandemic	11
Role of departmental support structures and self-efficacy on physics student persistence: An examination of students’ experience from 19 physics graduate programs	11
Young women’s longitudinal identity negotiations in physics and mathematics throughout upper secondary education	11
Inventory of Galilean Transformation of uniform linear motion in position-time graphs	11
Applying module analysis to the Brief Electricity and Magnetism Assessment	11
Assessment of student knowledge integration in learning work and mechanical energy	11
Using representational gesture to enact instants in collaborative problem solving in physics	10
Longitudinal trends of high school physics students’ perceptions of experience, difficulty, and development in a long-term inquiry framework	10
Using the Conceptual Survey of Electricity and Magnetism to investigate progression in student understanding from introductory to advanced levels	10

Endorsement of gender stereotypes affects high school students’ science identity	10
Examination of students’ quantum physics knowledge construction with peers and metacognitive evaluations	10
Dynamics of collaborative modeling in an ill-structured real-world problem	10
Can large language models correctly interpret equations with errors?	10
Do we have a quantum computer? Expert perspectives on current state and future prospects	10
When AI evaluates its own work: Validating learner-initiated, AI-generated physics practice problems	10
Student sensemaking on electrostatics problems involving the method of images through the lens of epistemic game framework	10
Concept image framework for derivatives from contour graphs	10
How gender composition and group formation impact the effectiveness of group work in two-stage collaborative exams	10
Graduate program reform in one department of physics and astronomy: A case study of students’ experiences with early new policy	10
Enrollment to exams: Perceived stress dynamics among first-year physics students	10
Analyzing problem solving in secondary physics education: A rubric-guided approach to explore individual learning needs	10
Energy as a source of preservice teachers’ conceptions about radioactivity	10
Self-efficacy changes and gender effects on self-efficacy in a large-scale robotic telescope focused curriculum	9
Hybrid teaching: A tale of two populations	9
Beyond normalized gain: Improved comparison of physics educational outcomes	9
Exploring techniques to improve machine learning’s identification of at-risk students in physics classes	9
Implementation and goals of quantum optics experiments in undergraduate instructional labs	9
Role of analogies with classical physics in introductory quantum physics teaching	9
Effects of male-dominated physics culture on undergraduate women	9
Development, evaluation, and gender differences in a novel workshop intervention to narrow the physics gender gap at postcompulsory level	9
Graph theoretical methods for understanding student social interactions in physics classrooms	9
Limiting case analysis in an electricity and magnetism course	9
Context affects student thinking about sources of uncertainty in classical and quantum mechanics	9
Sense of belonging is an important predictor of introductory physics students’ academic performance	9
Exploring physics teacher identity: Pathways toward equitable instruction among teachers	9
Overcoming the more measurements, the better intuitive heuristic in physics data evaluation: The role of inhibitory control	9
Physicality, modeling, and agency in a computational physics class	8
Preservice physics teachers’ nonroutine problem-posing process: Metacognitive strategies and beliefs	8
Enhancing peer instruction in physics: Understanding cognitive processes and refining rules	8
Investigating student ability to follow reasoning chains: The role of conceptual understanding	8
Evaluation of a new teaching-learning sequence on the particulate nature of matter using crystal structures	8
Performance of ChatGPT on the test of understanding graphs in kinematics	8
Not feeling recognized as a physics person by instructors and teaching assistants is correlated with female students’ lower grades	8
Quantum mechanics curriculum in the U.S.: Quantifying the instructional time, content taught, and paradigms used	8
Seeing quantum effects in experiments	8
Impact of perceived recognition by physics instructors on women’s self-efficacy and interest	8
Relationship between semiotic representations and student performance in the context of refraction	8
Identifying student conceptual resources for understanding physics: A practical guide for researchers	8
Network analysis of graduate program support structures through experiences of various demographic groups	8
Educational data augmentation in physics education research using ChatGPT	8
Validation of two test anxiety scales for physics undergraduate courses through confirmatory factor analysis and Rasch analysis	8
Gaze behavior as a key to revealing strategies for identifying indirectly proportional graphs in thermodynamic and mathematical context	7
Impact of more realistic and earlier practice exams on student metacognition, study behaviors, and exam performance	7
Using a research-based assessment instrument to explore undergraduate students’ proficiencies around measurement uncertainty in physics lab contexts	7
Who and what gets recognized in peer recognition	7
How to evaluate students’ decisions in a data comparison problem: Correct decision for the wrong reasons?	7
Using expectancy-value theory to understand the teaching motivations of women physics lecturers	7
Evaluating a department-wide initiative incorporating computational methods into the undergraduate physics curriculum	7
Assessment of expert decisions in graduate quantum mechanics	7
Improving student understanding of fermionic and bosonic wave function	7
Incorporating explicit discussions on the duality of reasoning into physics instruction	7
Predicting community college astronomy performance through logistic regression	7
Undergraduate physics students’ experiences: Exploring the impact of underrepresented identities and intersectionality	7
Visualizing and predicting the path to an undergraduate physics degree at two different institutions	7
Professional contexts of physics instructional labs: More than technical support	7
Augmenting learning environments using AI custom chatbots: Effects on learning performance, cognitive load, and affective variables	7
Reinforcing mindware or supporting cognitive reflection: Testing two strategies for addressing a persistent learning challenge in the context of air resistance	7
Investigating peer recognition across an introductory physics sequence: Do first impressions last?	7
Investigating and improving student understanding of the basics of quantum computing	7
High-stakes exams inflate a gender gap and contribute to systematic grading errors in one introductory physics series	7
Could an artificial-intelligence agent pass an introductory physics course?	7
Student difficulties and alternative conceptions in learning particle motion in force fields	7