Teaching and physics education research: bridging the gap
Open accessAbstract
Physics faculty, experts in evidence-based research, often rely on anecdotal experience to guide their teaching practices. Adoption of research-based instructional strategies is surprisingly low, despite the large body of physics education research (PER) and strong dissemination effort of PER researchers and innovators. Evidence-based PER has validated specific non-traditional teaching practices, but many faculty raise valuable concerns toward their applicability. We address these concerns and identify future studies required to overcome the gap between research and practice.
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Active learning pedagogies have demonstrated significant improvements over passive lectures.
“Active learning pedagogies,4 such as peer instruction, small-group activities, or a flipped classroom structure, have demonstrated significant improvements over passive lectures9–14.”
From AI tutoring outperforms in-class active learning: an RCT introducing a novel research-based design in an authentic educational setting (2025) · cites this paper as [13]
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References 262 · Cited by 422
- Authors
- Fraser, J. M., Timan, A. L., Miller, K., Dowd, J. E., Tucker, L., & Mazur, E.
- Affiliations
- Queen's University (CA)
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Mazur, Eric
- Venue
- Reports on Progress in Physics
- Publisher
- IOP Publishing
- Published
- 2014-03-01
- Volume
- 77
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 032401
- ISSN
- 0034-4885 (ISSN-L)
- 1361-6633
- OpenAlex
- W2068173719
- Cited by
- 422
- References
- 262
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 71 · 2014: 113 · 2013: 96 · 2012: 18
- FWCI
- 349.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Reports on Progress in Physics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Innovative Teaching Methods
- Social Sciences › Education › Science Education and Pedagogy
- Social Sciences › Education › Evaluation of Teaching Practices
- Keywords
- physics education research, research-based teaching strategies, evidence-based teaching, physics faculty, research dissemination, research-practice gap, faculty concerns
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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
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