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The Survey of Physics Reasoning on Uncertainty Concepts in Experiments (SPRUCE) was designed to measure students’ proficiency with measurement uncertainty concepts and practices across ten different assessment objectives to help facilitate the improvement of laboratory instruction focused on this important topic. To ensure the reliability and validity of this assessment, we conducted a comprehensive statistical analysis using classical test theory. This analysis includes an evaluation of the test as a whole, as well as an in-depth examination of individual items and assessment objectives. We make use of a previously reported on scoring scheme involving pairing items with assessment objectives, creating a new unit for statistical analysis referred to as a “couplet.” The findings from our analysis provide evidence for the reliability and validity of SPRUCE as an assessment tool for undergraduate physics labs. This increases both instructors’ and researchers’ confidence in using SPRUCE for measuring students’ proficiency with measurement uncertainty concepts and practices to ultimately improve laboratory instruction. Additionally, our results using couplets and assessment objectives demonstrate how these can be used with traditional classic test theory analysis. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

Concepts and practices surrounding measurement uncertainty are vital knowledge for physicists and are often emphasized in undergraduate physics laboratory courses. We have previously developed a research-based assessment instrument—the Survey of Physics Reasoning on Uncertainty Concepts in Experiments (SPRUCE)—to examine student proficiency with measurement uncertainty along a variety of axes, including sources of uncertainty, handling of uncertainty, and distributions and repeated measurements. We present here initial results from the assessment representing over 1500 students from 20 institutions. We analyze students’ performance pre- and postinstruction in lab courses and examine how instruction impacts students with different majors and gender. We find that students typically excel in certain areas, such as reporting the mean of a distribution as their result, while they struggle in other areas, such as comparing measurements with uncertainty and correctly propagating errors using formulas. Additionally, we find that the importance that an instructor places in certain areas of measurement uncertainty is uncorrelated with student performance in those areas. Published by the American Physical Society2024 

Science educators agree that computation is a growing necessity for curricula at many levels. One program looking to bring computation into high school classes is ICSAM (Integrating Computation in Science Across Michigan), an NSF-funded program at Michigan State University. ICSAM is a year-round program that brings a community of teachers together to help them equitably add computation into their physics curricula. While in the ICSAM program, data is collected from participating teachers through interviews, surveys, classroom videos, and more. In this paper, we examine a case study of a very active participant who fits the mold of a typical high school physics teacher. We utilize the lenses of critical pedagogical discourses and contextual discourses to explore the decision-making behind the adoption of various resources by this teacher during their time with ICSAM. The ways in which this teacher integrated computation in their classroom, along with the nuanced challenges that they faced, may be able to help inform other teachers, professional development providers, and curriculum development of the nature of implementing computation into high school curricula. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (DRL-1741575) and Michigan State University's Lappan-Philips Foundation. 

With the growing ubiquity of computation in STEM fields, understanding how to teach computational thinking (CT) practices has become an active research area in the last two decades, with particular emphasis on developing CT frameworks. In this paper, we apply one of these CT frameworks and compare the results with a task analysis to examine how CT practices relate to specific design features of an in-class problem. We have analyzed video data from two separate groups working on one computational class period, which utilizes a minimally working program to model magnetic field vectors. While still in the initial stages of the study, our preliminary results indicate that what is left out of the minimally working program will impact the CT practices students use, particularly around building computational models. Ultimately, we hope this work will help instructors to design activities that can target & build specific CT practices. 

While computation is a crucial aspect of modern science, students rarely have opportunities to engage in such work. In this study, we designed a series of professional learning opportunities for 12 physics teachers to support their enactment of equitable computational pedagogies. We asked how and why teachers utilized two primary resources of the PLS when making decisions about computational pedagogies. We analyzed multiple data sources using lenses from a situative learning perspective to examine teachers’ critical pedagogical discourses. We discuss how teachers’ critical discourses shaped the way the resources were utilized when designing computational learning opportunities for their students and the implications for future equity-oriented computational professional learning opportunities for teachers.