Congratulations to deputy Director Dr Paul van Kampen on his recent insightful and useful chapter on students’ understanding of electricity and magnetism co-authored with Professor Mieke de Cock of KU Leuven, n the the International Handbook of Physics Education Research: Learning Physics

 

The research reviewed spans all age groups and includes work carried out within a wide variety of frameworks. It starts with students’ ideas about electric charge, attraction and repulsion, charging, polarization, and magnetic interactions primarily from a qualitative viewpoint. It then describes research related to students adopting a more quantitative approach: electrostatic and magnetostatic force and field; the superposition principle; electric potential, electric potential energy, and capacitance. Sections on representations and commonly used diagnostic tests serve as a bridge to more advanced topics that often also require more advanced mathematical techniques such as integration and vector calculus: Gauss’ Law, Ampère’s Law, and Faraday’s Law. Throughout the chapter the authors highlight where they have found gaps in the literature.

Read more here: https://doi.org/10.1063/9780735425477_005 or contact Dr van Kampen if you have trouble accessing a copy.