Description:
This issue of CEPS that you hold in your hand, or that you follow on the webpage, consists of two parts. The first comprises three papers about physics education research. These were developed from contributions presented at the 1st Eastern European Meeting on Physics Education, which was held in September 2012 in Ljubljana. The second part gives three contributions on different topics. As usual, a book report is also presented at the end of this issue. Let us introduce the research field that the first part is focused on. Physics education research (PER) is a relatively new field in physics. It started todevelop from the personal interests of researchers such as Karplus, who became interested in education after personal experiences in a classroom of theirchildren. Most of the better known researchers entered physics education as a second career, after already being successful in other fields of physics. For a long time, PER was not recognized as an independent physics discipline by the physics community. It was understood that the teaching and learning of physics depended on lecturers’ and students’ gifts, and that physics was reserved for the most talented people. However, these perceptions have changed in recent decades, and studies of physics education and the teaching and learning of physics-related concepts have become increasingly appreciated.