Instructional Strategies that Foster Experimental Physics Skills

Abstract

Physics is fundamentally an experimental science. Myriad skills are necessary to perform physics experiments. This chapter outlines what might constitute important experimental physics skills for physics education. Drawing on several perspectives on experimentation outlined in the physics education research literature, we focus on technical and practical skills, cognitive decision-making skills, and metacognitive skills and explore research on developing and assessing these skills in instructional labs. Finally, we end the chapter with a brief comment on what we see as the open areas of research regarding instructional strategies that foster experimental physics skills.