There is a national shift in the new Indonesian curriculum towards employing differentiated learning approaches in addressing the diversity of students’ needs and abilities. A teachers’ judgment evidently corresponds to the duty required of physics teachers to monitor their students at an individual level. Within the context of Indonesian physics education research (PER), empirical study addressing this subject is still lacking. To fill this gap, eight Indonesian physics teachers’ experiences and limitations about their judgments within differentiated learning environments have been investigated through phenomenological study. Physics teachers were voluntarily recruited after they declared their endorsement and personal consent to participate in the study. Our participants were distributed over several teaching experiences, geographic regions, and information and communication technology (ICT) experiences. The latter experience might be taken into account since, through this study, upcoming developmental research will be projected on engaging recent technological approaches to address the limitations of teachers’ judgments. Online semi-structured interviews (~50 min) were conducted by the first author to all physics teachers involved. Other authors contributed in reviewing the interview protocol and training the first author’s pilot interview. The model of teachers’ thought and action, from Clark and Peterson, was implemented to uncover physics teachers’ experiences and limitations in making judgments within a diverse group of students. The findings revealed that physics teachers have conceded that they should dynamically adapt the learning process in order to meet heterogeneous students’ performances. Personal observation has mainly informed teachers in identifying students’ differences. After students have been identified, the teachers creatively designed learning transformations to accommodate the wide spectrum of students’ abilities. Nevertheless, several limitations were discovered as being encountered by physics teachers, particularly in terms of judgments’ equity and accuracy, as well as the teachers’ workloads. To overcome this, the teachers indicated various and supportive attitudes about technological implementations that would assist their judgments. Ideas for technological development were provided to address identified obstacles during the teachers’ judgments.

Abundant physics education research (PER) literature has been disseminated through academic publications. Over the years, the growing body of literature challenges Indonesian PER scholars to understand how the research community has progressed and possible future work that should be encouraged. Nevertheless, the previous traditional method of thematic analysis possesses limitations when the amount of PER literature exponentially increases. In order to deal with this plethora of publications, one of the machine learning (ML) algorithms from natural language processing (NLP) studies was employed in this paper to automate a thematic analysis of Indonesian PER literature that still needs to be explored within the community. One of the well-known NLP algorithms, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA), was used in this study to extract Indonesian PER topics and their evolution between 2014 and 2021. A total of 852 papers (~4 to 8 pages each) were collectively downloaded from five international conference proceedings organized, peer reviewed, and published by Indonesian PER researchers. Before their topics were modeled through the LDA algorithm, our data corpus was preprocessed through several common procedures of established NLP studies. The findings revealed that LDA had thematically quantified Indonesian PER topics and described their distinct development over a certain period. The identified topics from this study recommended that the Indonesian PER community establish robust development in eight distinct topics to the present. Here, we commenced with an initial interest focusing on research on physics laboratories and followed the research-based instruction in late 2015. For the past few years, the Indonesian PER scholars have mostly studied 21st century skills which have given way to a focus on developing relevant educational technologies and promoting the interdisciplinary aspects of physics education. We suggest an open room for Indonesian PER scholars to address the qualitative aspects of physics teaching and learning that is still scant within the literature.

There is a national shift in the new Indonesian curriculum to employ differentiated learning approach in addressing diversity of students’ needs and abilities. Teachers’ judgment obviously corresponds to the duty that takes physics teachers to monitor their students at individual level. Within Indonesian physics education research (PER) context, empirical study that has addressed this subject is still lacking. To fill this gap, eight Indonesian physics teachers’ experiences and limitations about their judgment within differentiated learning environment has been investigated through phenomenological study. Physics teachers were voluntarily recruited after they have declared their endorsement and personal consent to participate in the study. Our participants were distributed over several teaching experiences, geographic regions, and ICT experiences. The latter experience might be taken into account since, through this study, we would project upcoming developmental research about engaging recent technological approaches to cope limitations of teachers’ judgment. Online semi-structured interviews (~ 50 min) were conducted by the first author (P.H.S.) to all physics teachers. Other authors contributed in reviewing the interview protocol (E.I. and H) and training the first author’s pilot interview (H.R.). Model of teachers’ thought and action was implemented to uncover physics teachers’ experiences and limitations in making judgment within diverse students. Findings revealed that physics teachers have conceded that they should adapt learning process in order to meet heterogeneous students’ needs. Personal observation has mainly informed teachers to identify students’ differences. After students have been identified, they creatively designed learning transformations to accommodate spectrum of students’ abilities. Nevertheless, we discovered several limitations encountered by teachers particularly in terms of judgments’ equity, accuracy, and their workload. To overcome this, teachers indicated various and supportive attitudes about technology implementation to assist their judgment. Implications for technological development was provided to address obstacles during the teachers’ judgment.