Research Interests
Edit Yerushalmi heads the Physics Education Research Group at the Weizmann Institute of Science. The group aims to strengthen the experience of doing physics in school classrooms - constructing explanations to real-world phenomena in a model-making process of trial, error and learning. To that end the group is involved in curricular design for secondary school physics, operation of nation-wide professional-development frameworks for physics teachers, and physics education research.
Recent projects include the research based design of:
- "Gateway to Physics", inquiry oriented curricular units for middle school physics students, and accompanying professional development workshops for out-of-field teachers;
- The introduction of Deliberation-Labs and of learning analytic tools for personalized instruction in the national network of Physics Professional Learning Communities;
- The “Research Projects in High School Physics" teacher preparation program;
- "Interdisciplinary Computational Science" - a novel curriculum equipping students with the modeling practices and conceptual tools that are fundamental to understanding from a physics perspective, phenomena that are at the heart of chemistry and biology.
Prof. Yerushalmi serves as the principal investigator for the National Physics Teacher Center and the Rothschild-Weizmann MSc Program for Excellence in Science Teaching. She holds an MSc in physics from the Technion, a PhD in science education from the Weizmann Institute of Science and did her Post-doctorate at the University of Minnesota.
Prof. Yerushalmi research interests includes the development of students' reflective orientation towards learning, in various contexts (problem solving, inquiry projects, web web based diagnostic activities, etc.); the development of conceptual frameworks required for the introduction of contemporary interdisciplinary topics; the study of university faculty and TA's perceptions regarding the learning and teaching of problem solving and of high school teachers and students perceptions regarding inquiry in the physics classroom; and the design of professional development frameworks to support cooperative reflection of teachers on their instructional practice.