Physics Education Research: The Known and Unknown

The PER community has expanded the boundaries of doing physics. PER is often recognized as the first Discipline-based Education Research (DBER) field and as such, other STEM fields have used work produced by the PER community as either a guide or a starting point for their own advancements. The PER field, the researchers, and practitioners therein also have created a foundation of what best practices are and how to improve comprehension such that as students progress through the field, their learning will improve when the teaching practice implements some aspects of these best practices. What remains to be agreed upon, is if these best practices actually support all populations as they progress through the field. This talk will discuss how our sample populations for the field of PER impact our understanding of best practices within the field of Physics (but also more broadly within STEM) as well as the limitations to generalize our findings.