Getting Started - PER As A Multidimensional Space

Physics Education Research as a
Multidimensional Space:
Current Work and Expanding Horizons
Rosemary S. Russ and Tor Ole B. Odden
University of Wisconsin, Madison, 225 N. Mills St., Madison, WI 53706
Abstract:
Over the last several decades, Physics Education Research has abundantly grown in
both quantity and kind. With our field growing in so many directions, we have an
opportunity - and responsibility - to pause and take stock both of where we’ve been
and where we might go in the future. In this work, we draw on our experiences within
the broader field of education to construct a multidimensional map of the space of
research. For individuals, this map can provide an entry point into the vast and
complex world of educational research. For our field, this map allows us to both
systematically explore the current state of our field, and identify some ways we might
purposefully expand moving forward. We conclude by highlighting the numerous
factors that play into the multidimensionality of our research, and how this
multidimensionality can drive our research trajectories forward.
Russ and Odden PER as a Multidimensional Space
1. Introduction
Since McDermott’s Millikan lecture in 1990,1 the field of Physics Education
Research has expanded into what may appear to be a boundless, chaotic system. In
terms of numbers, those 30-odd years have seen an incredible rise in the number of
papers published for the Physics Education Research Conference—from
approximately 30 in 2001 to over 100 in the most recent proceedings. In terms of
focus, we have seen papers from understanding undergraduate student conceptual
learning and developing instructional materials to support it,2,3 to exploring how
faculty and instructors make sense of their pedagogy,4,5 to unpacking the experiences
of minoritized students.6,7,8 PER has abundantly grown in both quantity and kind.
When a field grows so profoundly, we should expect (and hope for!) development in
the nature of the work itself. Researchers with different identities can and should have
different foci and approaches to exploring those foci. Further, those differences
should be celebrated, as they are precisely what lends texture and richness to our
field. In fact, we suspect it is a deep appreciation of this richness that led to this
special issue. With our field growing in so many directions, we have an opportunity -
and responsibility - to pause and take stock both of where we’ve been and where we
might go in the future.
How, then, can we get a handle on “the state of things” in PER? We suggest our field
needs a map. Such a map can help us understand the complexity and richness of the
field by articulating the dimensions along which our work varies and coalesces.
Additionally, it can help us recognize which portions of which dimensions we have
heavily (perhaps even overly) explored and which portions we have not. Situating
ourselves in a map can, in turn, help us as a field decide where to focus future efforts.
But what sorts of dimensions will be most useful for understanding our expanding
field? In this paper, we draw on our own experiences as graduate students in two very
different departments to motivate our attention to dimensions from the broader field
of education research. The main contribution of our work, then, is a map that is
grounded in important dimensions from education research and fleshed out with
examples from PER. For individuals, this map can provide an entry point into the vast
and complex world of educational research. For our field, this map allows us to both
systematically explore the current state of our field and identify some ways we might
purposefully expand moving forward. We conclude by highlighting the numerous
factors that play into the multidimensionality of our research, and how this
multidimensionality can drive our research trajectories forward.
Getting Started in Physics Education Research 2

2. A Tale of Two Graduate Students

Since the field of PER began to emerge in the early 1980s, it has always been a
hybrid field. Many researchers came to it from a pure physics background, but there
have also been many who approached it from a background in more general
education research.9 This has remained a pattern over the years; according to Van
Dusen, Barthelemy, Henderson’s10 survey of PER graduate students’ educational
trajectories, there is a roughly 60/40 split between PER grad students in physics
departments vs. schools of education. Tor and Rosemary each took different
pathways into and around the field, and it is those different paths that give rise to our
claim that distinctions in the broader field of education can help us better understand
the current state of PER.
2.1 Rosemary’s Tale
I began my graduate career in physics education within a physics department. In my

first two years, I took graduate courses in physics and passed the same qualifying
exam taken by my peers studying “traditional” physics. However, upon completing
those requirements, I began my research in physics education within a very strong
research group. In addition to having at least four senior personnel who were active
members of the national PER community, numerous visiting scholars spent time
thinking with us during my five years in the program, and the community of graduate
students was curious, thoughtful, and active. My formal introduction to the field of
PER occurred when I attended the weeklong International School of Physics “Enrico
Fermi” in Varenna, Italy. There I heard the “giants” in the field give multiple talks,
laying out their own research programs and potential future directions for the field.11
It was transformative both intellectually and personally; I developed a stronger
understanding of the field of PER and its scope, and also developed my identity as a
physics education researcher.
Following that conference, my advisor encouraged me to take a year “to just read
stuff” and follow paths that interested to me. While this task was extremely
overwhelming and at times frustrating, I had the opportunity to read scholarship from
philosophy of science, educational psychology, linguistics, and cognitive science. As
my years in graduate school went on, and later as I accepted a postdoc in the field of
the Learning Sciences, I waded farther into the vast sea of generalized education
research. For me, this work illuminated theoretical mechanisms that could be driving
the student physics learning I had spent hours watching in video.

As my lens broadened from PER to educational research writ large, I began to see
physics learning not as a unique phenomenon, but as a particular instantiation of
larger educational systems and dynamics. This realization was freeing for me as a
researcher, because it meant that I didn’t have to “go at it alone.” My research
community, rather than being only those who understood and studied undergraduate
level physics, now included scholars with a variety of backgrounds and areas of
expertise all exploring an interrelated set of teaching and learning phenomena.
2.2 Tor’s Tale
I, too, started in a physics department, but there was no PER group at my university.
As a “pure physics” graduate student I did all of the usual physics grad things
(completed graduate-level physics courses, passed the qualifying exam, did research
in a lab) but found I spent more time thinking about the physics teaching and learning
in my courses than the physics content itself. At the time, my physics department was
not supportive of PER, but Rosemary had just joined the science education faculty in
the school of education. So, feeling compelled to pursue PER, I took my physics
master’s degree, transferred to the school of education, and enrolled in the Ph.D.
program there.
Within the school of education, I took numerous graduate education courses, which
introduced me to the broad strokes of education research—various theories of
learning, educational research approaches and methods, issues of power and equity,
and curriculum theory. From there, I gradually narrowed my focus to PER, ending
with a solidly PER-style dissertation focusing on undergraduate sensemaking in
introductory physics. So, although I came from a physics content background, my
ways of thinking about and doing research were shaped by the education courses I
took, and it was only later that I became acquainted with the research traditions
within PER.
This path was useful for situating what I was reading in PER within the context of
teaching and learning more generally. For example, theoretical frameworks are
fundamentally built in to general education research; in fact, in my graduate courses
we were taught from day one to distinguish between different types of frameworks
(theoretical, conceptual, analytical) and how each shaped and informed the research
process. Courses like the history of science education also helped me to see the ways
in which our current ways of thinking and doing research emerged historically over
decades of refinement. And, by studying the actual practices of teaching and learning
through courses on curriculum design and the learning sciences, I was able to reflect
on the purpose of all of this research in PER. In this way, my pathway highlighted

how I needed PER to give meaning and specificity to the complex landscape of
schooling explored in the general education literature.
2.3 Looking Across the Two Pathways
In our tales of our research careers, we have explicitly differentiated between our
experiences in PER and in education research. We do so because although there is
clear overlap in the two fields, they are also structurally distinct from one another.
PER is typically situated in and around physics departments, whereas general
education often has its own school and sub-departments within that school. Many of
us seeking tenure in one or the other of these departments receive clear messages
about the distinctions between the fields. Those distinctions are defined and
accentuated by the different journals for PER vs. general education research, as well
as different meetings and conferences.
Separating our experiences in the two communities allows us to articulate how our
experiences with education research helped us as scholars make sense of PER, and
our own place within PER. For Rosemary, education research helped her identify
general theories and frameworks for making sense of physics learning phenomena.
For Tor, education research helped him establish methods of inquiry most suited to
explore his interests within PER. For both Tor and Rosemary, our own expertise in
physics, while an asset for understanding the disciplinary specificity of physics
learning, can also be a blind spot12 that prevents us from recognizing dynamics
inherent in that learning. In that case, familiarity with the general education research
exposed us to educational systems and norms not immediately apparent to a
successful “insider” in the field. For each of us, research in general education helped
us understand our research in PER.
We suspect many readers agree with us; surely gaining insights into our work in PER
by bringing it into conversation with broader education research is a good thing. But
how can we go about doing so? The age of the field of general education research,
coupled with the incredible number and diversity of researchers in that field, makes
the sheer volume of work it has produced insurmountable by any single researcher.
And even if we could read all of the research, making sense of it all and situating our
own work within it would be impossible. Thus, even though we might want to use
education research to help us understand our own work in PER, it is not clear how to
do so. We suggest there are two possible approaches: leveraging individual scholars
or leveraging organizational frameworks.
2.3.1 Leveraging individual scholars. One way we might get help using education
research to situate our own work would be to rely on an individual scholar to mentor

us. To do so, we might ask someone who is already familiar with a body of work that
interests us to point us to the “best” or “seminal” articles from the field to read. We
might do this one-on-one, by sending an email or introducing ourselves at a
conference, or by taking a course with that person at our universities.
Rosemary’s graduate tale provides some insight into this approach. Her graduate
advisor was jointly appointed in the physics and education departments, and as a
result she was regularly introduced to scholars on campus who could mentor her in
applying educational research to her area of interest in PER. Additionally, since her
advisor was himself a graduate of a school of education who attended conferences
outside of PER, he sent her to attend general education research conferences
(American Educational Research Association, National Association of Research in
Science Teaching, and International Conference of the Learning Sciences) where she
extended her network of education scholar mentors.
But Rosemary’s tale, and any approach that relies on leveraging unfamiliar scholars
to support us in navigating new literatures, can only be successful when it takes place
within a network of privilege. Specifically, this approach requires that one (a) knows
who to ask to be a mentor, (b) has the positionality to feel comfortable asking that
person for help, and (c) has the social capital to get a favorable response from that
person. Rosemary had access to all of these things because of the “pedigree” of the
graduate research program to which she was accepted.
For example, she knew who to ask and felt comfortable doing so because her group’s
substantial amount of federal grant funding (in and of itself related to the positionality
of her advisors) brought visits from a wide variety researchers in the form of
colloquia presenters and advisory board members. One of those advisory board
members later became her postdoctoral advisor and intellectual mentor. Further, she
had the social capital to get a favorable response from these mentors in part due to her
identity as an upper-middle class, White student. Her socioeconomic status allowed
her to focus exclusively on obtaining the grades necessary to get a fellowship to
graduate school without having to balance the stress and pressure of a job. Her
Whiteness meant her peers and professors unquestioningly maintained high
expectations for her, including the assumption that she would attend and succeed in
graduate school.
This brief story highlights how not all researchers can leverage individual scholars to
help them use education research to understand their work. Instead, it was – at least in
part - her privileged identity, coupled with the privileged status of her graduate

program, that gave her the opportunity to identify, meet, and engage with potential
mentors to support her navigating the world of education research.
2.3.2 Leveraging organizational frameworks. Not all graduate students, nor even all
researchers, have this privileged access to mentors who are familiar with education
research. Even those who do may find their mentors are not familiar with the portion
of education research they need/want to explore in their work. What then are they to
do? How can they bring their work in PER into conversation with work from general
education?
Tor’s graduate experience offers some insights here. In taking courses on curriculum
theory, Culturally Relevant Pedagogy, and the history of education, he was able to
begin to see how different lines of research fit together (or not!), and where his own
interests lay within all those pieces. These courses defined particular sets of literature
as “related” and often positioned the theories of those courses in relation to other
literature. In short, his courses in the school of education provided him with a
framework for understanding the field.
What we want to highlight from Tor’s experience is the value of having some
external structure (in Tor’s case, course titles and collections of readings) to navigate
the wide variety of research. Substantial research demonstrates the value of having
organizational frameworks for learning,13 and we propose the same mechanism might
be useful in learning how to find connections between general education research and
our work in PER. In this work, we construct such an organizational framework; a set
of dimensions individual researchers, and we as a field, can use to bring order to what
can feel like the chaos of the field of general education and its relationship to our own
work in PER.
By providing a starting point for scholars as they seek to understand where their work
fits into the broader landscape, we are hopeful that such a map might alleviate at least
some of the privilege currently required to navigate between these two fields. But that
does not mean that privilege is not infused in the map we present. Specifically, the set
of examples we survey in each dimension are merely a selection of those papers with
which we are familiar. This approach perpetuates a “rich get richer” model of
education citations. We have read those authors whose work is privileged in the field,
and in citing it here we are making it even more privileged. Thus, even the map we
provide as an access point for less-privileged scholars is perpetuating the system of
privilege to which they do not yet have access.
This citation cycle is problematic for many reasons. First, many of the authors are
“foundational” precisely because they were White males who examined the world

from a position of privilege that appealed to other White males in the field. Second, it
is likely that there are other, less-cited authors whose work speaks just as well, if not
better, to the dimensions we explore. Third, while we have tried to avoid it, the
research we cite is undoubtedly skewed toward and filtered through our own
orientations and approaches. Here we can only acknowledge this bias in our survey of
the literature, and highlight that in the sections on expanding PER, we take extra care
to focus on emerging scholars whose work may be less-cited, but not less important,
for the field. We hope this work will open conversational opportunities for other
researchers to question our choices of examples, and for “progressive” scholars to
move into the “central” space of our field.
3. Education Research as a Multidimensional Space

Our purpose in this work is to develop a map – using dimensions from the broader
field of educational research - that can be used to situate the work of PER. As our
personal stories above are meant to show, we intend this map to be useful for
individual researchers (such as Tor and Rosemary) seeking to understand where they
fit within a broader context. Additionally, we will use this map in the rest of this
paper to take stock of where we are as a field.
3.1 Articulating dimensions of research
When we set out to construct a map of the educational research, we were faced with
the quandary that there is likely an endless number of ways to crave up the literature,
and different scholars would likely cut it up in different ways. However, our goal was
to select categories that meaningfully define and differentiate between different
strands of work in education, and in PER in particular. In considering potentially
relevant dimensions, we identified a variety of categories found in manuscripts,
journals, conferences/societies, and standard educational coursework.
 Manuscripts: There are a set of standard sections that are at least tacitly
expected to help orient the reader to manuscripts for publication. Some
journals or conference proceedings (e.g. American Educational Research
Association) explicitly mandate sections to include, such as motivation,
theoretical/conceptual framework, and methods (including study population
and context).
 Journals: When submitting a manuscript to any journal, authors typically
select key words to help readers identify potentially meaningful articles. For
some journals (e.g. Journal of the Learning Sciences), authors are asked to

select key words from a variety of categories such as methods/methodology,

population/age of learners, content area, and topic/phenomena.
 Conferences/Societies: Education researchers attend conferences for societies
that are defined in different ways. Each definition can be understood as a
category for members. Common types of categories include
methods/methodology (e.g. Qualitative research in education), domain (e.g.
National Council for Teachers of Mathematics), contexts of research (e.g.
Society of Research on Child Development), theoretical frameworks (e.g. Jean
Piaget Society).
 Educational Courses: The coursework in education departments is designed
to introduce new students to the various strands, or categories, of work in the
field. Looking across course offerings from our previous and current
institutions revealed distinctions between topics, epistemologies, methods and
methodologies, populations and contexts, and theoretical frameworks.
In addition, we followed the work of educational philosopher Crotty who, in his book
on The Foundations of Social Research, defines the four basic elements of the
research process as methods, methodology, theoretical perspective, and
epistemology.14 For the final map presented here, we selected dimensions that
appeared as categories in several places, and confirmed they would be useful to PER
researchers in the sense that our field’s work showed at least some variation within
the category. In the end, we articulated seven dimensions of education research that
play into and emerge in the design, conduct, analysis, and write up of a study.
We highlight how we selected these dimensions for the sake of transparency, but need
to acknowledge that the selection was not an “objective” process by which we
identified the dimensions of educational research. Instead, the dimensions we use are
a set among many that we (Rosemary and Tor) find valuable for making sense of the
field. In that way, these dimensions still necessarily reflect our own perspectives and
lenses, or, phrased differently, our assumptions and biases. Thus, here again we find
the effects of privilege in the field. We were invited to write this article because
Rosemary, in particular, has been positioned as a person who “knows things” about
education research. As such, her perspective/biases (and those of her graduate
student) are given more status than others in the field who were not invited to write in
this space. Here we can only recognize the privilege and power we have, and
(hopefully!) use it to create space for purposeful conversation around meaningful
dimensions of work in our field.
To support our analysis of the literature in terms of these dimensions in Section 4, in

we organize the dimensions in order of familiarity; we expect most of our readers will

be more aware of the initial dimensions we present and perhaps less so with the later
ones. Additionally, we also organize the dimensions in terms of their relationships to
one another, from least to most foundational in our research (Figure 1). We elaborate
how these dimensions are connected in Section 5.
Phenomenon
Discipline
Population
Context
Methods/Methodology
Theoretical/Conceptual6Framework
Epistemology
Figure 1. Dimensions of Education Research explored in this work
While we believe these dimensions support delineation of key differences in research,

we want to acknowledge that “defining” any single study or a field of research in this
way inherently reduces the complexity and nuance of the work. Categorization is
always a simplification. We do not intend this categorization scheme to take the place
of careful exploration of the literature relevant to the work of individual scholars; we
hope readers will seek out the complexity lost in our map. However, we nonetheless
present these dimensions as a way to help readers orient themselves both to the larger
field of education research, and to our field of PER in particular.
3.2 Touchstone Examples of Dimensions from Science and Mathematics

Education Research
To describe these dimensions for those who may be less familiar with them, we use
two popular papers from the broader field of education. Rather than selecting papers
from across the entire field of education, we chose two papers from the subfields of
science and mathematics education because we suspect those are most directly
relevant for PER. Further, we chose these papers both because they are highly cited
and influential papers in the field of general education research (see our caveat about
this “rich getting richer” approach in section 2.2.1), and because they differ in nearly
every dimension presented below.
The first paper we selected comes from science education (a field many of our
colleagues in PER are familiar with) and examines students’ knowledge and beliefs
about science (something the field of PER has devoted a fair amount of intellectual

effort toward understanding). Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Bell, and Schwartz’s work

comes out of a long line of research aimed to understand and probe how K-12
students view the Nature of Science (NoS).15 Since the early 1990s, there has been
great interest (especially in educational standards and reform efforts) in helping
students understand what it is that differentiates science from other types and ways of
knowing, which they call the Nature of Science (although the authors contend that,
since science isn’t a single, coherent domain, it’s best to just refer to it as NoS, not the
NoS). In this paper, the authors present and justify the development of an assessment
of students’ views on the Nature of Science. Their goal is three-fold: first, they
unpack the different aspects of science that students should understand, the different
aspects of NoS that provide the basis for their study. Second, they argue that previous
multiple-choice assessments of student views of NoS are insufficient and show how a
more open-ended assessment called the Views of Nature of Science Questionnaire
(VNOS), based partially on student interviews, provides a more accurate picture of
student understanding of NoS. Third, they justify the validity of their assessment,
based on extensive application and refinement, and provide suggestions for
implementation.
The second paper we selected comes out of sociology, and is commonly thought of as
one of the foundational works in the development of Situated Cognitive Theory.
Lave, Murtaugh, and de la Rocha’s work came at a point when educational
researchers were increasingly questioning the validity of decontextualized studies of
learning.16 Their study is a direct response to this critique, and it focuses on the ways
in which context affects mathematical reasoning and performance, specifically
looking at how grocery shoppers use arithmetic in supermarkets. The authors had the
shoppers carry tape recorders as they went about their shopping, asking them to
“think out loud” while also following them around and engaged them in conversation
about what they were doing. Using this data, they investigate the ways in which the
shoppers used arithmetic to make price comparisons in order to decide what to buy.
They then compare the shoppers’ performance in the supermarket to their
performance on a paper-and-pencil arithmetic test, finding that shoppers performed
much better in the grocery store than on the test. Based on this finding, they tease
apart some of the strategies that the grocery shoppers used to quickly and accurately
make price comparisons, such as simplification and rounding, multiple rounds of
calculation, and repeated checks and updates of their results.
4. Dimensions of Education Research

In what follows, we use the dimensions of education research in our map to explore
the current state of our field, and identify some ways our field might purposefully

expand moving forward. Although we discuss these dimensions as “decisions”

researchers make in their work, we do not coneptualize these decisions as explicit,
unrestricted, or mutually-exclusive. We discuss this nuanced conceptualization of “a
decision” in section 5.
Given the large number of dimensions, we use a parallel structure across the sections
to support readers in “wading through the weeds.” Specifically, in each of the
sections we (a) define the dimension, (b) briefly survey the breadth of the dimension
within the broader fields of science and mathematics education research, (c) highlight
how the dimension plays out in the two exemplar papers, (d) use multiple examples
of current work to describe how the dimension is populated within PER, (e) suggest
potential ways PER might expand along the dimension by foregrounding the work of
several forward-thinking scholars.
4.1 Disciplinary Dimension
The first dimension is disciplinarity. When we define ourselves - even just in name -
by the discipline we study, we make the discipline (or subdiscipline) we explore a
central dimension of the work. Part of defining the disciplinary dimension of our
work is to delineate, both for ourselves and others, the domains in which we expect
our arguments to apply. Further, doing so allows us to make automatic connections to
other researchers we want to engage in scholarly conversation around our ideas.
In the broader field of education research, this disciplinary dimension is often quite
coarse. Work is defined as, for example, science education research,17,18,19
mathematics education research,20,21,22 or teacher education research.23,24,25 Along this
dimension Lederman and his colleagues’ work is clearly science education.15 Lave
and her colleagues’ work is ostensibly mathematics education;16 it focuses on
people’s ways of thinking and reasoning about arithmetic and problem solving with
numbers.
However, there are also some complications to this seemingly straightforward

dimension. First, in some cases, disciplines may sub-divide into smaller categories
and in other cases may not. For example, Lederman and his colleagues would not
consider their work to be specific to, say, biology, but instead want to be identified as
science generally.15 Second, there is research that cannot be defined by a single
disciplinary dimension, either because it is a phenomenon that reaches across multiple
domains (e.g. studies of teacher identities in literacy and mathematics26) or because it
is the phenomenon itself is not disciplinary (e.g. perpetuation of ideology in
schooling27). Lave and her colleagues’ work falls into this category;16 although she

demonstrated the situated nature of thinking in the realm of mathematics, the theory
of Situated Cognition is understood to hold across multiple domains.
4.1.1 How is PER distributed along this dimension? PER as a field is defined by a
discipline, and in doing so it delineates itself from other disciplines such as Biology
Education Research or Chemistry Education Research. But within PER, there also
exist strong sub-disciplinary boundaries. There are distinctions between introductory
physics28,29 and advanced-level physics,30,31 and distinctions within each of those
between kinematics32,33 and electrostatics34,35 or quantum mechanics36,37 and
electrodynamics.38 For example, Podolefsky and Finkelstein’s work explores
conceptual blending in the sub-discipline of electricity and magnetism,39 while
Scherr’s work describes different theoretical models of student knowledge of
simultaneity in the sub-discipline of relativity.40
As in the general education research, there are also complicating cases within PER.
For example, although research on LA’s often occurs within the context of physics
courses,41,42 the general insights from that work are typically not limited to the
discipline of physics.43 Further, there are those who study phenomena that may not be
inherently disciplinary such as a sense of belonging.44
4.1.2 How might PER expand along this dimension? One option for PER to extend its
work along this dimension is to carefully identify the important sub-disciplines our
work needs to cover. For example, there is a heavy amount of work in introductory
sub-disciplines such as energy,45 but comparatively little work in modern physics.
Recently, scholars in our field have pushed to broaden our scope in this dimension,
and we encourage that work to continue.
Additionally, though, we suggest that we as a field should continue to identify ways

to shift and stretch our work so that it extends beyond the bounds of what we have
traditionally called “physics.” For example, researchers at the University of Maryland
have begun to explore interdisciplinary connections between physics and
biology.29,46,47 Extending PER along this dimension in this way has several
affordances. First, it allows our work to be more widely read, thus giving us more
opportunities for feedback, collaboration, and impact. Second, it provides us with a
greater set of literature to inform our thinking. And finally, it allows us to see
continuities with other work we might otherwise miss.
4.2 Phenomenological Dimension
Beyond the general domain or discipline of research, the next most obvious
dimension is the phenomenon—that is, “what are we studying?” When building a

study, figuring out what phenomenon to study is perhaps the first thing we tackle.
But, as anyone who has done educational research well knows, picking one’s
phenomenon is usually more complicated than it first seems. This may be because the
general class of phenomena we are interested in—teaching and learning—are
incredibly complicated, so we can at best study only specific aspects of them. The
importance of this dimension, then, lies in the process of narrowing one’s focus to
one or more specific aspects of teaching and learning— “nailing down” what we are
trying to study. This, in turn, makes the process of studying teaching and learning
more manageable, narrowing the scope of one’s study to reasonable levels.
Within mathematics and science education research writ large, there are a huge range
of phenomena under study. This, in part, is because over time, the constructs of
“knowledge” and “learning” have become incredibly expansive, extending from
content learning of school subjects,48,49 to constructing meaning in everyday
life,50,51,52 to changing systems that constrain and enable individual learning.53,54
Lederman et al. and Lave et al.’s works nicely illustrate the breadth of this
dimension.15,16 Lederman et al.’s work focuses on students’ multifaceted views of the
Nature of Science through the lens of their developed assessment.15 In contrast, Lave
et al. are interested in how people use math in everyday life, beyond the standard
arithmetic used in formal educational settings;16 that is, they are less interested in
people’s specific knowledge or learning processes, and more in the structures,
systems, and norms of interaction that affect these processes.
Together, these two studies illustrate a key aspect of this dimension for the field of
general science and mathematics education research: some educational phenomena
include classroom learning and some do not. In other words, research in general
education takes an expansive view of the system of learning, such that phenomena
occurring outside of classrooms reflect back on and drive what we see in classrooms.
The phenomena we see in classrooms are built from and around what occurs outside
of classrooms, across one’s lifespan and in different places.
4.2.1 How is PER distributed along this dimension? Within PER, we also
investigate a wide range of phenomena, but most of these are classroom- or
institution-based. That is, the phenomenon that we commonly investigate are
grounded in experiences of those in formal teaching and learning situations. For much
of our history, most of our research was focused on student misconceptions,55-59
assessment,60,61,62 and educational innovations,63,64 all of which took place in, and was
used in, classrooms.

Since the early 2000s, a great deal of focus has turned to student attitudes and beliefs
about physics,65,66,67 models of student cognition and understanding,68,69,70
interactions of identity and social structures within physics,71,72,73 studies of
institutional change,74 and transitions from 2- to 4-year colleges.75,76 However, in
nearly all cases the phenomenon under study is found within or around formal
learning spaces in institutions of higher education.
4.2.2 How might PER expand along this dimension? We would argue that PER might
expand along this dimension by broadening what constitutes physics learning and the
phenomena we consider relevant to physics learning. Specifically, although formal
physics learning is central to our field’s mission, PER could push ourselves to explore
phenomena that do not immediately “look like” physics. For example, Hinko et al.’s
work examining interactions between university educators and K-8 children in an
after-school program is a push in this direction.77 They make a compelling argument
that the teaching modes used in those spaces may impact what goes on in more
formal learning spaces. As we consider expanding our work along this dimension, it
may become necessary to expand what we consider the beginnings—and driving
factors—of physics learning.
4.3 Population Dimension
As researchers, another important part of our work is identifying the population we

want to study. For some of us, a commitment to a certain population actually drives
the phenomenon we choose to study. In other cases, it is the other way around; we
select a phenomenon we are interested in and then select the population that will help
us best understand that phenomenon. Either way, this dimension answers the question
“who am I studying?” and often extends to “who do I need to study in order to
convince others of my argument?”
Identifying our population of study is a one way in which we define the context of our
work. In doing so, it sets boundaries on the kinds of arguments we can make and
which researchers may be interested in our work. Further, how we define our
population conveys to others a great deal about the assumptions we make in our
work. For example, defining our population as undergraduate physics majors sends a
very different message to our readers than defining our population as largely White,
male physics majors.
Across the general mathematics and science education literature, in the same way,
there is much variation in phenomena, there is also large variation in the populations
that are studied. This range includes ages of young children,78,79 adolescents,80,81 and
adults.82 It includes professions such as students,83,84 teachers,85,86 and school

leaders,87,88 as well as non-school-based professions.89,90 It includes various units of

participants from individuals,91,92 to learning communities,93,94,95 to families,96,97 to
specific cultural and ethnic groups.98,99 It includes participants of varying race,100
gender,101 and first language.102 Lederman et al. use the VNOS survey in school
settings, with high school and college students in science courses, as well as with
undergraduate pre-service teachers;15 the population was selected because of its role
in schooling. In contrast, Lave et al.’s work focuses on adult grocery shoppers;16 the
population was selected precisely because of its lack of connection to formal
schooling. Only Lave et al. include demographic information about their population
(age, income, education, gender, and first language).
4.3.1 How is PER distributed along this dimension? Kanim and Cid’s work
documenting the demographics of our research provides a systematic picture of our
distribution along this dimension.103 In PER, our decisions about population have
largely come from our initial focus on improving undergraduate instruction. We have
focused on students enrolled in those courses not only because they are of interest to
us, but also because—in our roles as instructors in those courses—we have relatively
easy access to them. Unlike general education studies that often have to develop
strategic recruitment and compensation strategies for their studies, PER can typically
access large numbers of undergraduate students from a variety of courses each
semester.28,104
As our field has grown, so have the populations we have studied. We have expanded
to include upper-division students,35,105,106 non-majors,29,107 graduate students,10,37,108
K-12 teachers and students,109-112 instructors/TAs/LAs,113,114 as well as institutions
themselves.42,74 This work has provided us with a great deal of insight into the
dynamics of physics teaching and learning beyond introductory courses, and has
opened up the space of who “counts” as a learner of physics. However, as Kanim and
Cid’s thorough examination of the demographics of our field’s research
demonstrates,103 much of our work continues to examine non-diverse, privileged
populations.
4.3.2 How might PER expand along this dimension? As Kanim and Cid carefully
document,103 our studies have disproportionately examined populations from
Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic (“WEIRD”) societies (Ding &
Zhang’s work with Chinese teachers is a notable exception115). This focus on a
WEIRD,116 predominantly White population is not unique to PER; the field of
educational psychology within the broader education literature has begun to reflect on
what it means that the vast majority of what they “know” about human psychology
and behavior comes from studies of a very narrow, privileged slice of the world.117

PER is fortunate to have a number of scholars who have already pushed us to expand
along this dimension. Critical new research the experiences of minoritized students in
physics.7,108 Even further, some scholars are rightly demanding our field not only
expand our populations of study, but also destabilize our normalization of Whiteness,
cis-gender, and heterosexuality in our research.118
PER could also expand our work in this dimension by examining features of our
population that arise from their non-student/teacher identities (even if we still chose
to recruit them from physics courses). Often in our own work, Tor and Rosemary find
themselves interchanging the terms “students” and “participants.” This
interchangeability arises because the primary inclusion criteria for our studies is that
participants be students in science courses. What if instead, we invited people
(possibly students) to participate because they demonstrate physics-like reasoning in
their workplace or when they talked to their children? This type of expansion may
necessitate an explicit discussion within our field of what makes something
“physics,” and such a discussion would likely reveal a lot of our tacit assumptions
and biases that are worth making articulate for one another.
4.4 Contextual Dimension
When designing their research, scholars must decide where they will look to study
their phenomenon among their population. Specifically, they must make decisions
about the context of their work by answering “What environment do I need to
explore/design to make my argument?” Answering this question involves articulating
the “identifiable, durable framework for activity with properties that transcend the
experience of individuals” as well as “the constructable, malleable nature of the
setting in relation to the activity of particular [participants]” (p. 71-72).16 Context
involves features both independent of participants (e.g. physical arrangement of
space) and tied to participants (participant expectations or roles). As a result, for
many scholars, their contexts and participants are inextricably overlapped and linked.
Decisions about context are crucial to our work. First, they embody assumptions we
have about what “matters” in the phenomenon we are studying. For example, in Tor’s
work examining undergraduate student sensemaking in the context of interviews, he
makes the tacit assumption that the phenomenon of sensemaking is approximately the
same in interviews as it would be in the classroom. Second, contexts both support and
constrain what we are able to understand about the phenomenon we study. In
Rosemary’s work examining pre-service teacher learning in the context of her
methods courses, she can only experience and make sense of interactions of
predominantly White, middle class women. For readers, our decisions about context

help them understand whether and how our arguments are generalizable or applicable
to their own work.
There are multiple levels of context, all nested within one another, that influence the
arguments we can make in our work.119 Here, we focus on the microsystem: the
immediate setting of the participants that is “complex of relations” involving “the
factors of place, time, physical features, activity, participant, and role[s]” (ibid., p.
514). This portion of context is the one most commonly given by science and
mathematics education researchers and entails descriptions of professional
development programs,120,121 classroom activity,122,123 teacher preparation
programs,124,125 interviews,126,127 informal learning environments,128,129 or everyday
spaces.130,131 For example, Lederman et al. quickly describe a variety of microsystems
in which their survey can be used, and suggest specifically that the context involve
“controlled conditions (e.g. in class under supervision)” (p. 511).15 In contrast, Lave
and her colleagues spend a full five pages describing the supermarket microsystem of
their study, carefully articulating its imposed and malleable features and what that
means for their analysis.16
In terms of the microsystems explored in mathematics and science education, we

often distinguish between natural and experimental contexts. Dunbar refers to this as
the difference between studying phenomena “in vivo” as they naturally occur, or “in
vitro” in a laboratory setting designed to make the phenomenon occur.132 Lave and
her colleagues’ research in supermarkets seems a clear case of in vivo work.16 Indeed,
the main purpose of her study was to explore mathematical thinking in spaces in
which it occurs naturally. Lederman et al.’s context is less clearly in vivo or in vitro.15
Do we consider schooling to be a “naturalistic” context? It is clearly not naturalistic
in the way the grocery store is, but it is clearly more naturalistic than, say, an
interview or the typical laboratory-based settings common in educational psychology.
4.4.1 How is PER distributed along this dimension? In terms of the in vivo/in vitro
distinction, PER is well distributed along this dimension. Our field has relied heavily
on in vitro-like contexts to explore a range of phenomena. For example, we have
made extensive use of both interviews71,133 and surveys.66,67 These in vitro contexts
have been invaluable because they have allowed us to create more regular, sustained
opportunities to observe and study our phenomena than we would naturally have
access to. Additionally, there are a range of studies that observe and understand
participant experiences of physics in vivo as it occurs in formal schooling.73,134
4.4.2 How might PER expand along this dimension? There are multiple opportunities
for PER to contextually expand. First, we could (and indeed should!) add new

microsystems to our in vivo studies. Again, we have many scholars pushing us

toward contexts of higher education outside of 4-year, predominantly White-serving
institutions such as 2-year institutions of higher education and/or Historically Black
Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs), and
Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs).8,135-138 However, to date there is little to no work
in PER which studies physics teaching and learning outside of the context of formal
schooling. What would it mean for our field to expand in that direction as well?
Beyond expanding our in vivo contexts, PER could also begin to explicitly articulate
the power and influence of contexts over the arguments we produce. Currently, many
of us (Rosemary and Tor included!) merely drop a sentence or paragraph about
context into the methods sections of our papers, and do not play that context forward
into the substance of our analysis or conclusions. However, Bronfenbrenner describes
how macrosystems are an important part of context that “refers to the overarching
institutional patterns of the culture or subculture, such as the economic, social,
educational, legal, and political systems.”119 He highlights that macrosystems are not
only structural, but also carry norms and ideologies that give meaning to the activity
and interactions of the participants. Barthelemy, McCormick, and Henderson
explicate the larger contexts of the lives of the female students in their work.108 Doing
so is essential for their - and our - understanding of women’s experiences of
microaggression in physics.
For in vitro studies, PER researchers could also begin to address questions about
ecological validity of our contexts. diSessa describes how “we do not want to analyze
data that are collected under circumstances that relate in problematic ways to the
conditions that hold when the processes we supposedly are investigating ordinarily
operate” (p. 528).139 We must ask ourselves, and explicate for our readers, how
confident we are that the in vitro studies we design actually create space for a
reasonable approximation of the phenomenon we study.
4.5 Methods/Methodological Dimension
In addition to deciding the who, what, when, and where of their work, researchers
also need to decide the how of their study. Methods and methodologies are the
systematic approaches we take to obtaining data to convince others of our argument.
Further, methodological choices impact not only data collection but also data analysis
and data presentation. Many of us have “go to” methods that both capitalize on our
strengths and seem to “fit” with the phenomena we are interested in studying. For
example, Tor’s interest in looking in a fine-grained way at student sensemaking made
interviewing coupled with case-study methods the appropriate choice for his work.

Further, interviews were a fairly natural extension of his experience talking with
students and working through problems with them both as a tutor and a TA.
Within general science and mathematics education research, methodological choices

are extremely diverse. However, researchers tend to classify themselves as either
quantitative or qualitative scholars (with some mixed-methods researchers as well).
Selecting a particular methodological framework narrows the type and amount of
evidence we will have to make our arguments compelling. As such, they are an
important part of our research work.
Quantitative methodologies are used to understanding patterns in the complex

educational phenomena in the world. To “see” these patterns, these methods involve
isolating and reducing the number of variables or factors in data collection and
analysis. In data collection in mathematics and science education, this reduction
might involve collecting responses to Likert-scale surveys,140,141 scores on research
instruments,142,143 times,144 or, more recently, computer log files.145 In data analysis,
this reduction involves analyzing counts, frequencies, trends either of already
quantized data such as scores,146 or of codified qualitative data.147-150 Lederman et
al.’s use of a survey and subsequent analysis of that survey in terms of percent
correctness is prototypical quantitative work.15
In contrast, qualitative researchers in mathematics and science education are typically

not interested in reducing complexity, but instead in revealing it. As such, the
methods they use precisely attempt to maintain and understand the full range of
features that construct the phenomenon of study.151 In terms of data collection,
qualitative researchers lean toward what can be called “thick” observations. For
example, they may observe natural interactions,152,153 design and conduct interactions
in interviews or think-alouds,127,154,155 or observe activity in purposefully-designed,
learning spaces.156,157,158 Their analyses of these data tend to be rich and fine-grained
in the form of case studies,159,160 discourse analyses,161,162 or ethnographies.163,164,165
Lave and her colleagues’ observations and interviews with shoppers in grocery stores
are qualitative;16 their analyses take the form of snippets of transcripts put together to
tell a story about shoppers’ mathematical activity.
4.5.1 How is PER distributed along this dimension? We use a fairly standard set of
methods and methodologies within PER, both qualitative and quantitative. Typically,
methods for data collection include surveys,66,67 assessment-instruments,60,166
interviews,71,133 and participant observation.167 In terms of data analysis, many studies
rely on basic statistical techniques168 and coding analyses either of written data169,170

or video records.171 Further, our field uses large-N summary/frequency analyses,172

discourse analysis,173,174 and case-study analysis.175,176,177
4.5.2 How might PER expand along this dimension? As technologies change and
grow, the number of methods for data collection and analysis increase dramatically.
PER could decide to pursue some of these new methods, such as participant collected
data with relatively little change in our research designs.178,179 However, there are a
number of scholars in our field whose work represents substantially newer horizons in
this dimension. In the quantitative direction, Brewe and his colleagues’ work using
network analysis opened a new set of methods for our field to consider.135,180,181,182
Additionally, many researchers are working to advance our use of statistical methods
for analysis of large data sets.183,184,185 In the qualitative direction, several scholars
have pushed our understandings of the modalities we can analyze in video records of
student learning.186,187
4.6 Theoretical and Conceptual Dimension
In science, we acknowledge that we do not “see” the physical and natural world
except through the lens of the theories and models we have developed to interpret the
world. In the same way, in education research we do not “see” our phenomena except
through the particular lenses we (explicitly or tacitly) adopt. Instead, we adopt
theoretical perspectives as “way[s] of looking at the world and making sense of it” (p.
8).14 Eisenhart defines theoretical frameworks as “structure[s] that guide research”
that are “constructed by using established, coherent explanation of certain phenomena
and relationships” (p. 205).188 For example, both Rosemary and Tor commonly use
the theoretical frameworks of personal epistemology189,190 and Knowledge in
Pieces,154,191,192 also known as the resources framework.69,193
Theoretical frameworks provide us with a set of constructs and relationships between

those constructs that create systematicity in our work. They not only help us interpret
the phenomenon we observe, but also structure which phenomenon we are able to
observe in the first place. For researchers, intentionally selecting a theoretical
framework allows us to align our study questions, methods, and analysis and identify
research and researchers whose work we use to build and extend our arguments. In
doing so, theoretical frameworks give us a language for acknowledging and
operationalizing our assumptions. For readers, theoretical frameworks tell us both the
stance from which someone approached their research, and something about how they
will interpret their results.
Some education researchers—Rosemary included—define themselves more by their

theoretical frameworks than by the specific phenomenon, discipline, or population

they study. Communicating and joining with scholars who share a theoretical
framework allows scholars to advance their understanding of, and the power of, the
theoretical framework itself. As such, it is not uncommon to find mathematics and
science education scholars working or presenting together at conferences or in special
issues of journals.
Within the wider field of education research there are a massive number of theoretical
frameworks to adopt, with new frameworks or refinements to frameworks regularly
proposed. Scholars in mathematics and science education use theoretical frameworks
as diverse as distributed cognition,194 sociocultural theory,195 and critical race
theory.196 Further, each of these theories has been refined for use in science and
mathematics education. For example, Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory has been
narrowed and used as Activity Theory,197,198,199 and further refined into Cultural-
Historical Activity Theory.200,201 The two focal papers illustrate this diversity:
Lederman et al. use a cognitivist framework, viewing beliefs and understandings as
properties of individual students.15 Lave et al., on the other hand, adopt a
sociocultural perspective and view knowledge as being situated within activities and
contexts, inseparable from the particulars of those contexts.16
Once one has chosen a particular theoretical framework, there is still more to do.
Since theoretical frameworks are extremely broad, education researchers also must
decide which specific concepts from within those frameworks we will use in our
studies. The resources theoretical framework, for example, hypothesizes the existence
of a huge number of different resources (of various types), but in practice we do not
typically categorize all of the possible resources an individual is drawing on. For
example, while Lave and her colleagues’ work draws heavily on activity theory, they
focus mostly on the role of what they call “setting” within the larger activity system.
Other researchers focus on other aspects of activity theory including tools,202,203
and/or roles and division of labor.204,205
4.6.1 How is this dimension populated in PER? Within PER, there are several
commonly-used theoretical frameworks. Within the cognitive realm, scholars have
drawn heavily on conceptual change theories57,59,60 and the resources
framework.71,173,206,207,208 More recently, and largely following a push from
Otero,209,210 scholars have used sociocultural frameworks to explore the dynamics of
physics learning.73,74,135 However, there is also a significant amount of the literature
that distances itself from theoretical frameworks entirely, (implicitly) positioning
itself as a-theoretical.9

4.6.2 How might PER expand along this dimension? There are of course a fairly
infinite number of theoretical frameworks (particularly if we include sociology,
linguistics, and science and technology studies, all of which have relevance) PER
could choose to adopt to expand our work. Some researchers have begun doing so in
remarkable ways, and not surprisingly the use of those theories has resulted in new
insights about minoritized populations.211 For example, the work of Traxler and her
colleagues use theories of gender performativity from outside of PER to problematize
our existing assumptions and research around gender.118 Similiarly, Rosa & Moore
Mensah’s scholarship exploring the experiences of successful Black, female
physicists draws on Critical Race Theory to recognize our tendencies toward
“construction of differences” (p. 3) in our research.7 Work of this sort not only allows
us to understand familiar phenomena in new ways, but also to recognize the
complexity of phenomena that have remained hidden by our previous assumptions as
embedded in our theoretical frameworks.
Further, within our use of theoretical frameworks, our field could demand clarity
from one another around the concepts and constructs we use. Such a process would
be akin to clarifying our conceptual frameworks188 by defining the nature of
constructs we typically use intuitively (such as “ideas, “beliefs,” or “attitudes”).
Gupta, Hammer, and Redish’s work on ontology is explicit in its articulation of the
constructs.212 In fact, their purpose in that work is precisely to specify the ontology of
ontologies! As our field begins to draw on a larger number of theoretical frameworks,
it will become essential that we define the constructs within those frameworks with
more precision than we have to date.
4.7 Epistemological Dimension
We have saved the dimension - epistemology - for last, and will take some care in
articulating it. When education researchers talk about the epistemology of their
research, they are not referring to what many of us in PER think of (personal
epistemology made popular by the work of Hammer and Elby189). Instead, they are
using the term in the philosophical sense to refer to the “what constitutes knowledge
or truth?” Specifically, a researcher’s epistemology indicates what researchers
consider to be knowable about the world, something akin to “What is it that you know
when you say you know?”
While there is a long list of variants in epistemology that are meaningful for
education researchers—e.g. positivist, post-positivist, empiricist, interpretivist,
hermeneutic, structuralist, postmodernist, and on and on213,214—here we limit
ourselves to two main categories: what Crotty calls objectivism and

constructionism.14 When researchers differ across the epistemological dimension, it

can often seem as though they are talking different languages; one might not accept
either the questions or the data of the other. As such, it is important to clarify our own
epistemologies.
The first orientation, objectivism, is rooted in the idea that objects, truth, and reality
all exist outside of our perception of it. An analogy may be useful; objectivists
believe that whether I see/hear/sense/measure a tree falling in the forest, the tree still
fell.14 In this tradition, data is “collected” and results are “found” (and “reproduced”)
because the phenomenon of study is assumed to exist independent of our
measurement of it. For example, in Rosemary’s work on mechanistic reasoning, she
took people’s words as a direct indication of their cognition, and thus used their
words to make claims about what they did or did not know at that given point in
time.215 In that work, she assumed people’s cognition existed in their heads and
“lived” outside of the study, waiting for her to “find” it; her intervening to document
that cognition did nothing to alter the singular truth of it.
In this epistemological orientation, there is one “reality” and it is the job of

researchers to design studies that allow us to get as close as possible to that reality. A
wide range of studies in mathematics and science education adopt such a stance
toward educational phenomena.216,217 Lederman et al.’s survey follows this objectivist
epistemology.15 In their work, they assume that people “have” beliefs about the nature
of science that can be uncovered using their survey. In this work, researchers assume
“there is an objective truth we need to identify, and can identify, with [at least some]
precision and certitude.”14
The second epistemological perspective, constructionism, is defined largely in

opposition to the former stance. Within this orientation, we - as humans - construct
our reality historically, sociologically, and perceptually. Hence, the tree may or may
not fall in the forest, but our understanding of its fall is what matters. As Crotty
describes, knowledge and “meanings are constructed by human beings as they engage
with the world they are interpreting” (p. 43).14 This perspective does not believe we
create truth and reality ad hoc as researchers; instead, we construct meaning in
interaction with objects in the world. As a result of that construction, there will be
many truths for any given phenomenon, and there is no attempt to refine research
methods to get “closer” to the truth. Instead, the product of research is meaning, not
truth. Here, data is not “collected,” but “generated,” and what comes from analysis
are not “findings,” but “understandings.”

Constructionism - the rejection of a reality independent of our observation of it - is

challenging to wrap our minds around. One might be inclined to think that any
researcher who studies phenomenon in context is a constructionist. However, the
existence of context in a study is an insufficient criterion for constructionism.
Researchers must be constructing meaning through the context (constructionism), not
merely truth-seeking within the context (objectivism). For example, Lave and her
colleagues are not looking to “find” grocery shoppers’ knowledge within that
context.16 Instead, the researchers (not the participants) are constructing meaning
through the context of grocery shopping. They describe how their work involves “the
very conceptualization of practical [grocery store] arithmetic as a gap-closing
[problem solving] process” (p. 94).16 The researchers take the actions and mental
activity of the grocery shoppers and construct that activity as mathematics, with the
awareness and acknowledgement that other researchers could construct that activity
differently. A range of qualitative studies in math and science education adopt this
perspective, constructing meaning around mathematical competence,218 classroom
opposition,219 scientific/school-based power,220 and even learning itself.221
4.7.1 How is this dimension populated in PER? Within PER, some work assumes
there is a reality of knowledge, beliefs, experiences, etc. that exists independently of
us as researchers. Concept inventories, and their use as measurements of student
knowledge, are prototypical examples of an objectivist epistemology.61,222,223 Other
examples include interviews and surveys designed to “uncover” student beliefs.66,67
Within this work, the objectivist orientation is clear in the discussion of methods and
their limitations. Researchers may focus on how close they think they have gotten to
the “actual” phenomenon they want to study. Did the online survey “actually” capture
student beliefs? Did the interview questions “bias” the student toward one answer
over another so that we cannot say their answer is what they “really” know? These
questions all stem from the assumption that there is a reality we can capture
independently of our interpretation of it.
Recently, some researchers have started unpacking the experiences of students in

undergraduate classrooms. In this work, they acknowledge the existence of multiple
narratives around the “reality” of the classroom. Danielak et al.’s work on the
sensemaking identity of an introductory engineering student, Michael, is an
example.71 Michael’s experience of his engineering class, as he recounts it in
interviews to the researchers, allows us to understand him as an outsider in his
community. Michael’s experience as an outsider is constructed through his
interactions with the researchers; it is not a reality to be measured.

4.7.2 How might PER expand along this dimension? Establishing, or even
recognizing, one’s epistemology can be extremely challenging, because often what
we take to be “truth” is so embedded in our ways of being in the world we cannot
recognize it. As such, a first step for expanding along this dimension will involve
self-interrogation on the part of researchers to establish our own existing, and largely
tacit, epistemologies. Once we have begun tackling that (insanely overwhelming!)
task, we could begin to talk about what it would mean to expand what we count as
knowledge and evidence of that knowledge in our field. Are we comfortable with the
idea that we cannot get closer and closer to a single truth? Such a discussion might
open up new avenues for understanding (and constructing) the phenomenon of
physics teaching and learning.
5. Discussion: Constraints on Multidimensionality

We have described seven dimensions from general education research we believe
give us some leverage in parsing and understanding the current state of the field of
PER. Those dimensions are: Discipline, Phenomenon, Population, Context,
Methods/Methodologies, Theoretical/Conceptual Framework, and Epistemology. We
can understand that each dimension represents a decision researchers make (either
tacitly or explicitly) when they design and conduct research and make an argument
about that research to the field. As a result, any research we conduct is inherently
multidimensional.
But should we imagine researchers going down our list and freely making seven
independent decisions about their work? The answer quite clearly has to be “no.”
Although we as researchers have a fair amount of agency, we are by no means able to
freely choose all the dimensions of our work. As one of the reviewers of this piece
aptly pointed out, our “choices of frameworks, methods, and phenomena are often
shaped by non-research interests such as outside political pressures or underlying
cultural views.”224 For example, PER scholars in physics departments may face
political pressure (in the form of tenure reviews and journal impact factors) to study
particular populations (undergraduate students) in particular contexts (calculus-based
courses).104 Power structures dictate, often in hidden ways, what populations are
worth studying, in what ways, and through which lenses. Privilege shapes which
portions of the dimensions are worthwhile, significant, and prestigious.224 (We wish
to be clear that we, as authors, are only just coming to see these hidden forces in our
research decisions. We are incredibly grateful to our reviewer for pointing it out, and
in fact are frustrated that our privilege puts us in the position of having to speak her
insightful words.)

In addition to political and social power constraining our decision making, our own
decisions in one dimension inherently reduce and constrain decisions along other
dimensions. Although we have described these dimensions—and choices researchers
make about them—independently, they are all connected with one another. It would
be a mistake to assume researchers can pick and choose along these dimensions in an
ad hoc fashion, based solely on preference or convenience. Figure 1 represents one
form of that connection; epistemologies necessarily underlie theoretical frameworks,
which underlie methods, and so on and son on. As Crotty points out, one’s
“theoretical framework [is a]... statement of the assumptions brought to the research
task and reflected in the methodology as we understand and employ it” (p. 7,
emphasis ours).14 In this way, our phenomena, methods, populations, and contexts are
deeply connected to our epistemologies and theories.
This does not mean that we always explicitly articulate our epistemologies and
theories before making other decisions. There are clearly times when we might select
our methods or populations first. However, we argue that even when we do so, we
have still tacitly chosen a particular epistemology and theory. In fact, precisely this
thing occurred for Rosemary in graduate school. When it came time to write the
“Theoretical Framework” chapter of her dissertation, she told her advisor (who will
remain nameless), that although she knew about the resources framework, she didn’t
really think she used it as a theoretical perspective in her work. (Even now this story
makes Rosemary—and likely her advisor—cringe!) In response, he (kindly) pointed
out the ways in which her work reflected a dynamic model of individual, context-
dependent cognition with at least some nod toward a constructionist epistemology.
First, her work involved qualitative, discourse analysis of student speech
(constructionism). Second, her work took the form of case studies which made claims
about what individual students did and did not know (individual cognitivism). Third,
her work explored student reasoning in classrooms (context-dependence) and
highlighted particular transitions into and out of reasoning (dynamics).
This story highlights how Rosemary’s advisor (tacitly) guided her throughout her
research career to maintain consistency across all the dimensions of her work. He did
so because not doing so would undermine the very process of research through which
we systematically and consistently explore the dynamics of physics education. Tor’s
experience is similar but more explicit (perhaps Rosemary is less subtle than her
advisor); Rosemary repeatedly pushes him (sometimes to the point of frustration!) to
articulate his theoretical and conceptual frameworks such that he can explicitly
connect them to his phenomena, context, analysis and claims. The many dimensions
of our work are not, nor should they be, disconnected.

The interconnectedness of these dimensions suggests that we as a field must be

intentional about whether and how the dimensions in our scholarship align. Rather
than seeing a researcher’s commitment to a particular method as preference, we
should instead see it as a manifestation of a particular tacit epistemology that the
researcher could articulate in their work. Similarly, rather than seeing a researcher’s
selection of a particular context or population as a matter of convenience, we might
identify in it an underlying theoretical or conceptual framework that is worth making
explicit. Articulating these tacit connections among the dimensions of our work, then,
will be essential for others as they attempt to understand, and potentially reproduce,
our work.
We must also attend to instances when our research embodies what may appear to be
contradictory multidimensionality. For example, it would be odd, and indeed
completely inappropriate, for someone with a constructionist epistemology who
adopts a sociocultural framework in their work to then collect quantitative survey data
on individual student’s performance on a task and analyze it for frequency counts.
These types of dimensional mismatch are opportunities for individual researchers and
our field to consider the underlying assumptions in our work.
6. Conclusion
What have we gained from constructing and populating a map of PER based on
dimensions common in general education research? For individual researchers, we
hope they have gained insight into how their work relates to other work in the field.
In doing so, it might allow them to identify new avenues for their research trajectories
that are consistent with their fundamental commitments (for example, to
epistemologies, contexts, or theoretical frameworks) but stretch them in new ways.
Additionally, we hope the map provides multiple entry points into the general
education literature. For example, once Tor identified his theoretical commitment to a
dynamic model of individual cognition, he was able to select papers to read from the
subset of mathematics and science education that adopt a similar framework. The
broader field of education research becomes more tractable when individual
researchers know where they fall along these dimensions.
These dimensions can also help individual scholars identify intellectually meaningful
points of divergence from others in the field. If we do not purposefully identify and
acknowledge those divisions (which surely and appropriately exist!), we may default
to creating ad hoc divisions based on stereotypes or caricatures of another scholar’s
work. For example, rather than characterizing Rosemary’s work as just an example of
the “Maryland tradition,” someone could use the map to highlight dimensions along

which her work varies from others within that tradition,225 and is continuous with
work from other traditions.210 In that way, the map might push us beyond thinking
about homogenous “camps” within the field, moving us intentionally away from
potentially toxic assumptions about the work undertaken by scholars in other research
groups.
For the field, these seven dimensions are spaces where scholars can begin to be
transparent about their work so that we as a field can identify where we are. As such,
we hope this map provides us with an opportunity to pause and study whether we are
populating the map in the way that allows us to reach our goals. For example, we are
now in a position to ask ourselves: Have we selected appropriate portions of each
dimension that will allow us to assess our success in improving undergraduate
instruction for all of students? Or are we clustered in some portions of the map? And
if so, why are we clustered there?
In addition to assessing where we are, we also hope this map can be a starting point
for developing a systematic plan for growth and expansion in the future. There is no
doubt that PER will continue to grow in the coming years. New scholars are
constantly joining the field, and we are excited to have their voices and perspectives
as we work together to make sense of physics education. If we truly hope to achieve a
deep understanding of the dynamics of physics teaching and learning, we must be
intentional about our research directions along each of these dimensions. Though we
have attempted (from our privileged position) to draw attention to the work of the
remarkable scholars in our field who are pushing us along each of these dimensions,
we know that we have not captured all the innovative work in our field. We wish to
use this work as an emphatic and unequivocal call to each of us to elevate the voices
of these scholars, so that we as a field can recognize their efforts and follow their
lead. It is only when we come together to discuss our existing multidimensionality
that we can make informed decisions on how PER can and should proceed with its
important work.
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Getting Started - PER As A Multidimensional Space

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Physics Education Research as a

Rosemary S. Russ and Tor Ole B. Odden

University of Wisconsin, Madison, 225 N. Mills St., Madison, WI 53706

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 2

2. A Tale of Two Graduate Students

2.1 Rosemary’s Tale

I began my graduate career in physics education within a physics department. In my

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 3

2.2 Tor’s Tale

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 4

2.3 Looking Across the Two Pathways

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 5

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 6

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 7

3. Education Research as a Multidimensional Space

3.1 Articulating dimensions of research

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 8

select key words from a variety of categories such as methods/methodology,

To support our analysis of the literature in terms of these dimensions in Section 4, in

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 9

Figure 1. Dimensions of Education Research explored in this work

While we believe these dimensions support delineation of key differences in research,

3.2 Touchstone Examples of Dimensions from Science and Mathematics

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 10

effort toward understanding). Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Bell, and Schwartz’s work

4. Dimensions of Education Research

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 11

expand moving forward. Although we discuss these dimensions as “decisions”

4.1 Disciplinary Dimension

However, there are also some complications to this seemingly straightforward

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 12

Additionally, though, we suggest that we as a field should continue to identify ways

4.2 Phenomenological Dimension

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 13

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 14

4.3 Population Dimension

As researchers, another important part of our work is identifying the population we

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 15

leaders,87,88 as well as non-school-based professions.89,90 It includes various units of

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 16

4.4 Contextual Dimension

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 17

In terms of the microsystems explored in mathematics and science education, we

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 18

microsystems to our in vivo studies. Again, we have many scholars pushing us

4.5 Methods/Methodological Dimension

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 19

Within general science and mathematics education research, methodological choices

Quantitative methodologies are used to understanding patterns in the complex

In contrast, qualitative researchers in mathematics and science education are typically

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 20

or video records.171 Further, our field uses large-N summary/frequency analyses,172

4.6 Theoretical and Conceptual Dimension

Theoretical frameworks provide us with a set of constructs and relationships between

Some education researchers—Rosemary included—define themselves more by their

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 21

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 22

4.7 Epistemological Dimension

Getting Started in Physics Education Research 23