A Journal Club for Physics Education Research

Paula Heron, University of Washington

In the past few decades, physics education research has grown and diversified significantly. In the mid 1990s, the field was sufficiently limited in scope and membership that many researchers were able to keep up with essentially all of the literature in the field. Around that time, Physics Education Research Conferences (PERC) became an annual event, following immediately after the Summer Meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT). By the late 1990s, the PERC featured peer-reviewed proceedings. A few years later, Physical Review PER (then called Physical Review Special Topics PER) began publishing. Both venues have since grown significantly in size and scope. The most recent PERC Proceedings (for the 2018 conference) includes 113 articles. In 2018, 60 articles were published in PR PER, many from authors outside the USA. At the same time, the publication of PER in established journals such as the International Journal of Science Education and the European Journal of Physics has also increased. In addition to an increase in the volume of PER being produced, physics education researchers are increasingly interacting with other fields of discipline-based education research, cognitive science, linguistics, neuroscience, etc. As a result, many researchers find it challenging even to stay current with the literature in their own area let alone keeping up with developments in closely related fields.

The challenge of staying abreast of a diverse literature was the motivation for convening a working group at the 2019 FFPER. The goal of the group was to identify and take the first steps towards creating a mechanism to help physics education researchers stay broadly informed. As potential users of such a mechanism, we recognized the need for high quality as well as ease of accessibility. Initial discussions focused on clarifying the community’s needs, the intended scope, etc., as well as identifying an initial organizing team (see below). We decided to explore the “Journal Club for Condensed Matter Physics” as a potential model (https://www.condmatjclub.org/).

The Journal Club for Condensed Matter Physics is a curated collection of articles, each of which is accompanied by a short commentary by the expert who selected it. Roughly three articles are sent to subscribers and posted on the web each month. In operation since the early 2000’s, the Journal Club is an outgrowth of an earlier Journal Club run at Bell Labs. The current version was motivated by the shift from primarily paper-based publishing to online dissemination of research results. The Journal Club relies on the efforts of a rotating set of experts, who agree to “identify outstanding developments that they come across in the publications over the internet or in the various regular scientific Journals…” and to “…provide between half page to a page commentary on the paper selected and why he/she finds it particularly interesting.” This model seemed to us to have many of the features we sought: in particular, expert guidance on what to read, and why it matters. We also appreciated the following passage in the instructions for contributors: “We would like to establish … a positive tone towards the developments in condensed matter physics and to go to some lengths to avoid any ill-will. The Journal club of course ought not to be used as a column for ‘I told you so’ remarks. It is also important that the correspondents not write about their own work or of their immediate colleagues.”

Having adopted a model, we made several decisions about the audience, scope, format, etc., for the Journal Club for Physics Education Research or JCPER. We decided that while physics faculty, high school teachers, etc., would be welcome to subscribe, JCPER would be targeted towards the needs, interests, and expertise of the international community of active researchers. We further decided that the scope would be inclusive. Specifically, we would not limit the topics of articles or the journals they could be drawn from. We did agree on one restriction: articles had to be current as a retrospective effort could expand indefinitely.

We further agreed that JCPER would have to be relevant and accessible to researchers globally, inexpensive or free (to enable access for researchers without institutional access to expensive journals), that the project should not promote or perpetuate any inequities in the field by favoring articles from established or powerful authors, and that the commentaries should be constructive and respectful.

The working group produced a list of 75 potential contributors which was narrowed down to a broadly representative group of 15 who would be invited to form the first cohort. We also devised a list of keywords that would allow for tagging of articles, and for ensuring that the papers selected would represent a broad scope of topics.

The final working group session results in a set of next steps, which include finding an entity or organization to host the JCPER website, seeking modest financial support, and recruiting a few additional members for the organizing team to increase international representation beyond Europe and the US. Current plans are to launch JCPER sometime in 2020, with publicity through listservs, newsletters, etc. We plan on roughly five papers a month for the first couple of months to allow the community to get used to, and provide feedback on, the model. After that we envision a somewhat slower rate.

It is our hope that the JCPER will add to the vibrancy of PER, foster further interactions and increase impact.

Working Group members (*indicates part of the initial organizing team)

Paula Heron* (University of Washington)
Lauren Barth-Cohen* (University of Utah)
Natasha Holmes* (Cornell University)
Manher Jariwala (Boston University)
Gina Passante (California State University Fullerton)
Mary Bridget Kustusch (DePaul University)
David Meltzer (Arizona State University)
John Thompson (University of Maine)
Jayson Nissen (California State University Chico)
Paul van Kampen* (Dublin City University)
Lana Ivanjek* (University of Vienna)
Jenaro Guisasola (University of the Basque Country)
Mervi Asikainen (University of Eastern Finland)
Cedric Linder (Uppsala University)
Kristina Zuza (University of the Basque Country)
Bor Gregorcic (Uppsala University)

References

[1] https://www.compadre.org/per/perc/conference.cfm?Y=2018#PeerReviewed

[2] https://www.condmatjclub.org/

Disclaimer – The articles and opinion pieces found in this issue of the APS Forum on Education Newsletter are not peer refereed and represent solely the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of the APS.