The Physics Education Research group within the School of Physical Sciences at The Open University is a team of motivated practitioners utilising quantitative and qualitative methodologies to investigate the effectiveness of the teaching and learning of physics and astronomy in higher and distance education.
Our research interests include remote experiments and team-working, conceptual understanding of physics, assessment for learning, and equality, diversity and inclusion in physics education. We welcome PhD candidates who are driven to tackle these pedagogic challenges with us.
We conduct discipline-based education research across all disciplines of physical sciences, but our activities are currently centred around Physics Education Research and Astronomy Education Research specifically.
Most of our full-time research students are based at our Milton Keynes campus; for details of residence requirements for different modes of study see Full-time study and Part-time study.