Connecting Physics Education Research and Practice

Marisa Michelini is Senior Full Professor of physics education at the University of Udine. She is President of the Scientific Committee of the GEO University Italian Consortium, president of the Physics Education Research Italian Community, and Board Member of the International Commission on Physics Education of IUPAP (C14) and of the PED section of the European Physical Society (EPS) since 2016. She served as President of the International Research Group on Physics Education (GIREP) from 2012 to 2022 and was Board Member of Multimedia Physics Teaching and Learning (MPTL) from 2014 to 2022. Her research in physics education focuses on innovative educational pathways in various topics, including modern physics, strategies and prototypes for laboratory experiments, multimedia resources for physics learning, professional development for teachers, and informal education. She has received three major awards: the Italian Physical Society Award for the Exhibit Games Experiments Ideas (1989), the IUPAP-ICPE International Award for research in physics education (2018) and GIREP medal for the contribution in physics education research (2024).Italo Testa is Professor of Physics Education at the Federico II University of Naples. Since the beginning of his career, his research has focused on the professional development of secondary school teachers, designing teaching sequences in physics based on active learning approaches such as inquiry and socio-scientific questions, analyzing visual language in physics, modeling, and the Nature of Science. For over ten years, he has concentrated primarily on astronomy education research, the role of affective variables in learning physics, and quantitative analysis methods for assessing learning in physics and science. He has authored more than one hundred articles in national and international journals and serves on the editorial boards of Physical Review Physics Education Research (PRPER) and Astronomy Education Journal (AEJ). Additionally, he is coordinator of the Science Teaching Processes and Instructional Design strand of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA).Salvatore Esposito is Professor in the History of Physics at the Federico II University of Naples, past President of the Italian Society for the History of Physics and Astronomy (SISFA), and Research Associate at the Naples unit of the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Research (INFN). He has authored over 300 journal articles, mathematical reviews, and book reviews and has written or edited 13 books. His scientific interests currently span the history of physics, physics education, and scientific dissemination. Recognized as the world's leading expert on Ettore Majorana's work, his expertise also covers various topics in eighteenth- to twentieth-century physics. He is actively involved in initiatives to integrate the history of physics into teaching practices.

• Physics Education Research in Italy.- First experimentation of higher educational tools for an embodied and creative education on energy.- Teaching quantum information science at secondary school with photon polarization- and which path encoded qubits.- A didactic pathway on the concept of energy in primary school cognitive well being and self efficacy based on gender.- Investigating Undergraduate Students Identification With Physics Through Structural Equation Modeling.- Can Old Quantum Theoretical description of Physical Reality be considered worth teaching.- Design of a teaching and learning sequence on surface phenomena for university education.- Laboratory experience of optical reflection in a circular cavity.- Recent perspectives in physics education through the adoption of hardware and software technologies in the laboratory.- The wave model of light according to the interpretation of diffraction and spectroscopy phenomena by upper secondary school students.