user:caballero

I'm a physics education researcher who studies how tools and science practices affect student learning in physics, and the conditions and environments that support or inhibit this learning.

I earned my B.S. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004. I worked on opto-microfluidics transport and control experiments at the Georgia Institute of Technology earning my M.S. in physics before shifting my research focus to physics education. I helped found the Georgia Tech Physics Education Research group in 2007 and earned the first physics education focused Ph.D. from Georgia Tech in 2011 working on computational modeling instruction and practice. I moved to the University of Colorado Boulder as a postdoctoral researcher and helped transform upper-division physics courses to more active learning environments.

I conduct research from the high school to the upper-division and am particularly interested in how students learn physics through their use of tools such as mathematics, computing, and language. My work employs cognitive and sociocultural theories of learning and aims to blend these perspectives to enhance physics instruction at all levels. My projects range from the fine-grained (e.g., how students engage with particular mathematical tools) to the course-scale (e.g., how students learn the tools of classical mechanics) to the very broad (e.g., how do students in a massively open on-line course act like scientists?).

While co-directing the Physics Education Research Lab at MSU, I continue to collaborate with physics education groups at Colorado, Georgia Tech, and Kansas State on a number of these and other projects.

  • user/caballero.txt
  • Last modified: 2019/08/13 19:38
  • by rachel