- Futures-Oriented Physics Education by Olivia Levrini
- The Role of the Arts in Science Education for Equity, Justice, Change, and Sustainable Development by Maria Varelas
- Physical and Virtual Labs in Physics Education: Bridging Theory, Research, and Practice by Zacharias Zacharia
- Assessing and Improving the Learning Experience of All Students: Celebrating Successes, Addressing Serious Challenges by Stamatis Vokos
- Meaningful Assessment in Times of Artificial Intelligence by Gerd Kortemeyer
Olivia Levrini, University of Bologna, Italy
Futures-Oriented Physics Education
This talk introduces the emerging research field of Futures-Oriented Science Education (FOSE), focusing on its potential to reposition physics teaching in our societies, where acceleration and uncertainties are exacerbated by multiple, intersecting crises. Drawing on the history of Futures Studies, I will discuss how FOSE encourages us to reconsider the epistemic and axiological foundations of physics and to open, within our educational institutions, new dialogues across disciplines to promote futures literacy.
I will then outline the current state of this research area, followed by insights from empirical studies and classroom implementations developed in the European projects I SEE, FEDORA, and FEDORAS. These studies reveal both the persistence and profound influence of Modernity’s conception of the future, as well as the potential for the science of complex systems to enrich students’ encounters with other forms of temporality and to foster more positive and imaginative orientations toward envisioning alternative futures.
Olivia Levrini is Full Professor of Physics Education and History of Physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy "A. Righi" at the University of Bologna (Italy), and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Oxford (UK). She coordinated the European projects I SEE, IDENTITIES, and FEDORA, and is currently coordinating the EU Teacher Academy FEDORAS. She served as Associate Editor of the journal Science & Education (from January 2020 to December 2024) and is now Section Editor of the journal Science Education (since January 2025). Her current research interests include interdisciplinarity and futures-oriented science education applied to advanced STEM topics (e.g., climate change, artificial intelligence, quantum computing), cognition and conceptual change, identity, and processes of appropriation. She served as Conference President for the 2019 ESERA Conference.
Maria Varelas, University of Illinois Chicago, United States of America
The Role of the Arts in Science Education for Equity, Justice, Change, and Sustainable Development
The arts–literary, visual, performing–are usually considered separate from the sciences and, therefore, are not regularly used in science education across levels from preschool to graduate school. Exceptions include visual representations such as diagrams, sketches, maps, tables, graphs, illustrations, and photographs that have been historically a significant part of doing, teaching, and learning science. However, science education research has shown that other art forms, and particularly the performing arts, offer possibilities for learning, considered as both knowledge and identity construction, that become consequential for science learners, doers, and knowers. The arts provide opportunities to engage with concepts and practices at the ideational and interpersonal levels in deep and broad ways that leverage the brilliance, imagination, meaning making, and identity building of learners, including those who have historically and contemporarily not been included in science and science education. In this way, the performing, literary, and visual arts can re-distribute power and expand what counts as science and for whom in a variety of settings, including classrooms of younger and older students. Using arts-based ways of knowing elevates the significance of the body and the mind in learning science, liberates the body from restrictions often imposed in schools, embraces students’ cultural practices of being in the world, and creates spaces of exploration and places of belonging as well as possibilities for different futures. In the talk, I will discuss research that offers examples of such pedagogical possibilities along with their affordances for bridging science education and society in the current era.
Maria Varelas is Professor of Science Education and Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the President-Elect of NARST: A Global Organization for Improving Science Education Through Research. She served as the Director of the UIC Center for the Advancement of Teaching-Learning Communities and has co-coordinated for years the PhD program in Mathematics and Science Education. Varelas’s research focuses on exploring possibilities and challenges related to student learning when educators consider and practice science education centering equity and justice, using qualitative, phenomenological, narrative, multimodal discourse, ethnographic, and arts-based methodological approaches. With multi-year and multi-collaborator US National Science Foundation (NSF) grants totaling over $12 millions, her research has emerged and unfolded in collaborations with teachers, seeking to create together transformative and generative learning spaces and places, centered on minoritized students’ assets, agency, creativity, and voice, which challenge the power of restrictive structures and scaffold students’ creation of knowledge consequential for their futures and the future of their communities. She has published two books along with over 80 journal articles and book chapters, held various leadership positions in science education, and received several teaching and research awards. Varelas holds a Ph.D. in Education from the University of Illinois Chicago, USA, an M.S. in Education from the University of Rochester, New York, USA, and a B.Sc. in Physics from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece.
Zacharias Zacharia, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
Physical and Virtual Labs in Physics Education: Bridging Theory, Research, and Practice
This talk aims at discussing how physical and virtual laboratories contribute to students’ learning in physics. Drawing on embodied cognition and the use of an additional (touch) sensory channel, it integrates theoretical insights with empirical findings. Two research strands are highlighted: comparisons between physical and virtual labs without haptic feedback, and comparisons between virtual labs with and without haptic feedback. The aim is to uncover when and why each type of lab can be most effective, offering practical guidance for teaching while opening new directions for future research.
Zacharias Zacharia is a Professor of Science Education and director of the Research in Science and Technology Education Group at the University of Cyprus. He completed a B.A. in Education at the University of Cyprus (Cyprus), a B.A. in Physics at Rutgers University – New Brunswick (USA), and his graduate studies (M.A., M.Sc., M.Phil and PhD) in Science Education at Columbia University, New York (USA). He was the (co-) coordinator of several research projects concerning science and technology education that received continuous financial support over the years from the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation and the European Commission (more than 30 projects so far). In particular, Prof. Dr. Zacharia researched topics focusing on, among others, the design and development of technology supported learning environments in science, the development and assessment of science curriculum, the training of teachers for designing and implementing technology enhanced science teaching materials, physical and virtual laboratory experimentation, modeling, science and STEM+ curriculum development and assessment, RRI, conceptual understanding, teacher training and professional development, Open Schooling, educational evaluation and informal science education. Zacharias Zacharia has received several awards in recognition of outstanding scholastic achievement and excellence and has published many papers in major ISI journals (e.g., SCIENCE, Cognition and Instruction, Learning and Instruction, Journal of Research in Science Teaching). In addition, he is enlisted in the 'World Ranking Top 2% Scientists' list, created by Stanford University. He was an associate editor for six years for the Journal of Research in Science Teaching and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Science Education and Technology and the Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching. He is also a reviewer for several major ISI journals.
Stamatis Vokos, Bailey College of Science and Math, United States of America
Assessing and Improving the Learning Experience of All Students: Celebrating Successes, Addressing Serious Challenges
In the last fifty years, Physics Education Research (PER) has provided significant insights into what students learn in formal education settings (and the extent to which they fail to learn) and how we can improve the student learning experience from Kindergarten to graduate school. Careful studies on a variety of physics topics have documented the fine structure of student ideas while research-validated curricula have helped to deepen conceptual understanding, hone quantitative problem solving, and make physics lab experiences more worthwhile, thereby promoting deeper learning for a greater fraction of students at all levels. In parallel, systemic US efforts to improve the professional education of physics teachers and increase their number have started to bear fruit. Also, recent developments in machine learning have expanded the capabilities of researchers to investigate and create adaptive learning opportunities for students.
And yet, considerable challenges that threaten the systemic health of the whole physics enterprise remain. To make matters worse, recent changes in the state and federal legal and funding landscapes in the US are antithetical to longstanding researcher efforts to make physics accessible to all students. In this talk, specific examples will be given to illustrate results from research in cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of physics learning, as well as challenges and unanswered PER questions.
Stamatis Vokos, a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), investigates cognitive and affective aspects of teaching and learning in physics, supporting systemic change efforts at the local, national, and international levels. He has served on multiple committees of APS and AAPT and has chaired the National Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics. He is currently professor of physics at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.
Stamatis Vokos received his BSc (Hon) in theoretical physics at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK, and his Master’s and PhD in physics at the University of California, Berkeley. He conducted postdoctoral research in high energy theory at Argonne National Laboratory and at the University of Washington, where he discovered his true calling: physics education research. As part of the Physics Education Group at the University of Washington from 1994 to 2002, Vokos contributed to the research and curriculum development efforts of the Group, as well as played a leadership role in its local, regional, and statewide teacher education efforts. At Seattle Pacific University from 2002 until 2016, he was instrumental in recruiting one of the most prolific groups of physics education researchers in the United States at the time. At Cal Poly, in addition to being a member of the physics department, he is part of the Center for Engineering Science and Mathematics Education. Vokos is a member of the GIREP Board and co-organizes the GIREP Summer School for PhD students in PER.
Gerd Kortemeyer, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Meaningful Assessment in Times of Artificial Intelligence
In an era when generative AI can produce most correct end-of-chapter answers in first-year physics, meaningful assessment must pivot from endpoints to the paths students take to reach them. This talk argues for making reasoning, modeling choices, and quality of representation the primary targets of both formative and summative assessment. It will show how task design that elicits assumptions, multiple representations, estimates and units, error analyses, comparisons of alternative methods, and brief written justifications makes thinking visible - and how AI can be used productively as a coach in low-stakes settings while remaining constrained in high-stakes contexts. To keep workload manageable at scale without compromising trust, the talk presents human-in-the-loop grading workflows: confidence filters that route only reliable AI decisions forward and defer uncertain cases, plus clustering of similar solution paths so one carefully graded exemplar propagates to its peers. Psychometric checks provide evidence for reliability and fairness. The result is an assessment ecosystem that values sense-making over answer-matching, supports timely feedback, and remains auditable in the age of AI.
Gerd Kortemeyer, is a member of the rectorate of ETH Zurich and an associate of the ETH AI Center. He is also an Associate Professor Emeritus at Michigan State University. He holds a Ph.D. in physics from Michigan State University, where he taught for two decades. His research focusses on technology-enhanced learning of STEM disciplines; currently, he is advancing the research and development of AI-based tools and workflows for teaching, learning, and assessment.
