Trends in Physics Education Research

Contemporary discipline-based physics education research can trace its roots to the post-Sputnik era beginning in the late 1950s. The task of mapping out the history of a recent and growing field spanned by diverse agendae will undoubtedly be colored by one’s own experiences and interests. Therefore, our description of the foundations and frontiers of the field presented in this paper is a personal perspective that may not be shared by all other researchers in the field. However, we have attempted to present a balanced view in this document.