Analysis of the impact of Modeling Instruction (MI) on the sources of self-efficacy for students in Introductory Physics 1 will be presented. We measured self-efficacy through a quantitative diagnostic (SOSESC) developed by Fencl and Scheel [1] to investigate the impact of instruction on the sources of self-efficacy in all introductory physics classes. We collected both pre-semester data and post-semester data, and evaluated the effect of the classroom by analyzing the shift (Post-Pre). At Florida International University, a Hispanic-serving institution, we find that traditional lecture classrooms negatively impact the self-efficacy of all students, while the MI courses had no impact for all students. Further, when disaggregating the data by gender and sources of self-efficacy, we find that Modeling Instruction positively impacted the Verbal Persuasion source of self-efficacy for women. This positive impact helps to explain high rates of retention for women in the MI classes.

We investigated students' use of Newton's second law in mechanics and electromagnetism contexts by interviewing students in a two-semester calculus-based physics course. We observed that students' responses are consistent with three mental models. These models appeared in mechanics contexts and were transferred to electromagnetism contexts. We developed an inventory to help instructors identify these models and direct students towards the correct one.

Differences in learning gains between interactive engagement and lecture instructional practices have been well documented and yet the ways in which students participate in each of these learning environments are not clearly established. We use social network analysis as one way to establish differences the participation of students in lecture sections and students in Modeling Instruction, a curriculum that uses interactive engagement. One primary difference in the way students participate in the two instructional practices is that students in Modeling Instruction classes form learning communities and students in lecture classes remain isolated. Students in Modeling Instruction sections report ten times greater numbers of ties between students than those in lecture sections, forming richer and more deeply connected networks. We interpret these differences in terms of a participationist view on learning and as an explanatory mechanism for understanding documented differences in learning gains in the two settings.

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In this article we investigate students' understanding of: 1) vector components and, 2) vector products. We administered a test to 409 students completing introductory physics courses at a private Mexican university. In the first part, based on the work of Van Deventer [1], we analyze the understanding of components of a vector. We used multiple-choice questions asking for students' reasoning to elaborate on the misconceptions and difficulties of graphical representation of the x-and y-components of a vector. In the rest of this work, we analyze the understanding of the dot and cross products. We designed opened-ended questions to investigate the difficulties on the calculation and the misconceptions in the interpretation of these two products. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONThis section is divided into three subsections addressing the three objectives of this study.

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