Physics Education/Presentations

This is an exciting field of research which is rapidly growing and developing in many different areas. There are many different physics education research (PER) groups in the U.S. and across the world. The PER community does research in lots of areas: student conceptions, student attitudes, student learning and cognition, curriculum development, curricular assessment and evaluation, among others. The general goal of PER is to improve student understanding of physics, which involves learning about how students learn, what they know, how to teach, how to assess, and many other aspects of education. It's a complex field with many opportunities.

Research Groups (and there are many, many people out there working alone or with a few other people in smaller departments):

• Arizona State University
• University of Califoria-Davis
• Carnegie Mellon University-Center for Innovation in Learning
• University of Central Florida
• City College of New York
• Curtin Univ. of Technology, Sydney, Australia
• Harvard University
• University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Indiana University
• Kansas State University
• University of Maine
• University of Maryland
• University of Massachusetts
• University of Minnesota
• Montana State University
• University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• North Carolina State University
• the Ohio State University
• University of Oregon
• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• San Diego State University-CRMSE
• University of Sydney
• Tufts University-Center for Science and Mathematics Teaching
• University of Washington

Professional Organizations

• American Association of Physics Teachers
• National Association of Research in Science Teaching
• National Science Teachers Association
• Association for the Education of Teachers of Science
• American Educational Research Association

• American Institute of Physics
• American Physical Society
• NAS
• Institute of Physics
• National Science Foundation
• National Institute for Science Education

Resources for Teaching Physics

• Project Galileo at Harvard University (includes many of the following)
• ConcepTests/Peer Instruction
• Just-in-Time Teaching
• Tutorials in Introductory Physics from U. of Washington
• Context-rich Problems from U. of Minnesota
• Minds-On Physics from U. of Massachussetts
• Workshop Physics
• CPU (Constructing Physics Understanding)
• RealTime Physics: Wiley
• Interactive Lecture Demonstrations-no link available
• Physics Education Resource Letter in American Journal of Physics
• Modeling Instruction in high school and college physics

Other Links

• Graduate Students and PostDocs in Physics Education Research
• Physical Sciences Resource Center (through AAPT)
• PhysLrnR-Physics Learning Research listserv archives
• The CPU Project-powerful software and curriculum for high school physics, pre-service college physics, in-service elementary teachers
• The CIPS Project-a very cool middle school science curriculum in development

My Publications

McCullough, L. (2006). Science News in the Science Classroom. Journal of College Science Teaching 36(3), 30-33.

Whitten, B., Foster, S., Duncombe, M., Allen, P., Heron, P., McCullough, L., Shaw, K., Taylor, B., Zorn, H., (2004). “Like a family”: What works to create friendly and respectful student-faculty interactions. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering. 10(3), 229-242.

McCullough, L. (2004). Gender, Context and Assessment. Journal of International Women's Studies 5(4). Special Issue: Women in Science.

McCullough, L. & Krieger, A. (2004). A Census of the Physics Education Research Community. (Report)

Whitten, B.L., S. R. Foster, M. L. Duncombe, P. E. Allen, P. R. L. Heron, H. M. Zorn, L. McCullough, K. A. Shaw, B. A. P Taylor (2003). What Works? Increasing the participation of women in undergraduate physics. Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering 9(3/4) 239-258.

McCullough, L. (2003). Letter to the Editor, Physics Today, 56(7), 17. (Letter describing short research project on gender in Physics Today photographs.)

MacIsaac, D., Cole, R., Cole,D., McCullough, L., and Maxka, J. (2002). Standardized Testing in Physics via the World Wide Web. Electronic Journal of Science Education 6(3) March 2002

McCullough, L. (2002). “Gender, Math, and the FCI.” Proceedings of the 2002 Physics Education Research Conference. S. Franklin, J. Marx, & K. Cummings, Eds. Rochester NY.

McCullough, L. (2002). Women in Physics: A Review. The Physics Teacher 40(2) February 2002

McCullough, L. (2001). A Pipeline in Need of Patching: The Steady Drain of Female Potential from Physics. March 2001 Newsletter of the National Society of Black Physicists

McCullough, L. & Meltzer, D. (2001). “Differences in male/female response patterns on alternative-format versions of FCI items.” Proceedings of the 2001 Physics Education Research Conference. pp.103-106. S. Franklin, J. Marx, & K. Cummings, Eds. Rochester NY.

Some research talks I have given (PDF files of the slides, usually):

• Gender in Science and Math Education (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville 10/06)
• Kelly McCullough's workshop on Science Fiction in the Science Classroom (U Maine conference 6/06)
• Gender in Science and Math Education (U Maine conference 6/06)
• Static or Dynamic? The Current Status of Women in Physics (AAPT 1/06 Anchorage)
  The other two invited talks in this session are also available:
  The Gender Gap in Physics: Explanations, Data, Analysis by Jill Marshall, UT-Austin
  The Gender Gap in Physics: Some Research Results by Jennifer Blue, Miami University (Oxford, Ohio)
• Women in Science and Testing, or: Why does context matter? Trinity University (March 28, 2005)
• Gender, Context, and Testing. UW-Stout Women's Studies seminar (February 25, 2005)
• Gender, Math, and the FCI. Math dependence of FCI score. (PERC 8/02 Boise)
• The FCI and Context: Gender and Non-Physics Students. How do non-physics students fare on the FCI and its gender-focused counterpart? (AAPT 8/02 Boise)
• The Missing Women: Physics and Gender. Women's Studies talk given at Slippery Rock University, PA April 2002.
• Differences in male/female response patterns on alternative-format versions of FCI items. A look at 4 particular "Gender FCI" questions and student responses to the different versions of the questions. (PERC 7/01 Rochester with David Meltzer) This also was published in the 2001 PERC proceedings.
• Gender, Context, and the FCI: Further Studies. More results from the "Gender FCI" version of the commonly used assessment, given at several different institutions. (AAPT 7/01 Rochester)
• Does Learning Come in Pink and Blue? Gender and Learning. An overview of the literature on how gender affects learning: learning styles, biological differences, etc. Lots of references. (PERC 7/01 Rochester)
• Gender, Educational Reform, and Instructional Assessment, Part I. A look at the achievement gap in physics across 8 different schools. (AAPT 1/02 Philadelphia with Catherine Crouch)
• Gender, Educational Reform, and Instructional Assessment, Part II. This paper looks at the achievement gap school by school and by different pedagogies. (AAPT 1/02 Philadelphia with Catherine Crouch)
• A Gender Context for the Force Concept Inventory. Do the male-oriented contexts (rockets, cannonballs) of the FCI bias the test against women? How do men and women do on a version of the test that has female-oriented contexts? (AAPT 1/01 San Diego)
• Gender in Physics: The Past Predicting the Future? A talk about how background variables such as high school physics affect students' scores on conceptual tests. (AAPT 8/00 Guelph)
• How Does Gender Affect Group Interactions? A look at how groups interacted (who spoke to whom, etc.) analyzed by gender composition of the group.(AAPT 1/00 Orlando)
• What Helps, What Hurts: Factors affecting women's participation in science. Caucus given at Curriculum Reform Institute, June 2001, Oshkosh WI. Ideas from caucus participants included.
• Physics Education Research: What is it and what can it do for you? Given at UW-Eau Claire Sept. 2001 (not a pdf, just a powerpoint document with links)
• Gender Differences on Multiple-Choice Conceptual Tests. An older look at the FCI gender gap in an intro calc-based physics course. (AAPT 1/97 Phoenix)

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Last updated 08/27/04