Education literature

The physics education literature consists of both Physics Education Research (PER) and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).

Education Research (PER) characteristics:

• Research in K-12 and higher education.
• Focus on generalizable knowledge.

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) characteristics:

• Higher education only.
• Study and reflection of teaching practices.
• Results are context specific.

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PER and SoTL societies

• AAPT Physics Education Research Topical Group (PERTG)
• APS Topical Group on Physics Education Research
• International Research Group on Physics Teaching (GIREP)
• International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (issotl)
• PER-Central has news and events of interest to the PER Community
• SoTL Canada

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Books on PER and SoTL

• A view from physics: Discipline-based education research
• Engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning: A guide to the process, and how to develop a project from start to finish (ebook; 2023)
• SoTL in action: Illuminating critical moments of practice (ebook; 2018)

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Finding physics education literature

Finding this literature is complicated because it is spread out over different sources. It is a little messy and definitely different from searching the physics literature. Keeping track of what works and what doesn't will help a lot.

Visit PER-Central for articles, theses and dissertations, and curricular material.

Journals

Physics journals that publish articles related to teaching and learning:

• American Journal of Physics (AIP)
• Physical Review Physics Education Research (IOP)
• Physics Education (IOP)
• The Physics Teacher (AIP).

There are a number of education and SoTL journals where articles on the teaching and learning of physics are published.

Visit the Teaching Journals Directory from Kennesaw State University for a listing.

Databases

Physics databases:

• arXiv.org - arXiv is an openly accessible, moderated repository for scholarly articles in physics. Note that these are preprints, and not peer reviewed journal articles.
• Inspec - Covers the fields of physics, and includes preprints and peer reviewed journal articles.

Find out more from the Physics library guide.

Education databases:

• ERIC
• Education Database

More databases can be found on the Education library guide.

Multidisciplinary databases:

• Scopus
• Web of Science
• Google Scholar

Strategies

• Follow references cited in papers.
• Follow papers that cite a paper of interest. This can be done using “Cited by” in Google Scholar.
• Identify important authors.
• Keep track of keywords. Some examples are offered below.
• Teaching and learning phrases for use in physics and multidisciplinary databases:
  • "scholarship of teaching and learning" (NOTE: Use quotation marks for exact phrases)
  • SoTL
  • "scholarship of teaching"
  • "teaching and learning"
  • "educational scholarship"
  • "scholarly teaching"
  • "excellence in teaching"
  • "education research"
• Higher education keywords:
  • “higher education”
  • universit* (NOTE: The asterisk (*) truncation symbol can be used everywhere to pick up different word endings.)
  • college*
  • postsecondary OR “post secondary”
  • undergraduate*
• Keywords for education and multidisciplinary databases:
  • physics
  • astronomy
  • science OR STEM
  • laborator*
  • experiment*

Grey literature

Grey literature is not controlled by commercial publishers so it can be trickier to find. It includes social media and blog posts, reports, and government documents. Start with your favourite search engine.

• There is a Google search for Canadian academic searches.
• Try the Teaching Conferences Directory from Kennesaw State University.