With good reason, physics education research has focused almost exclusively on student difficulties and misconceptions. This work has been productive for curriculum development as well as in motivating the physics teaching community to examine and reconsider methods and assumptions, but it is limited in what it can tell us about student knowledge and learning. This article reviews perspectives on student resources for learning, with an emphasis on the practical benefits to be gained for instruction.
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Note that this is a term to refer to a psychological category, part of intuitive physics, not a component of theory. There are clearly differences between an “event” as a coordination class and the term as it is used in relativity, including with respect to expectations of duration.
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I thank Rajarshi Roy for this last example.
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© 2000 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2000
American Association of Physics Teachers
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