People
Physics Education Research (PER) group members
Yasemin Kalender
Dr Z. Yasemin Kalender is a Lecturer and physics education researcher in the Physics Department at the University of Liverpool. Her overarching research interests are in studying diversity issues in the physics discipline, investigating the motivational characteristics of students, and incorporating mixed methods and big data analysis techniques into the area of physics education research. Dr. Kalender received her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. After earning her Ph.D., she continued her academic work as a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell University. As an Active Learning Initiative fellow at Cornell, she investigated the impact of inquiry-based physics lab courses on students’ motivational factors across different demographic groups. Before coming to Liverpool, Dr. Kalender worked as an Assistant Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and as an Assistant Director of Science Pedagogy at Harvard University supporting STEM teaching and learning at all levels. Her current research projects focus on student motivation, equity, and diversity in physics at all levels, group work in lectures and lab courses, sense of agency in hands-on learning spaces, and graduate teaching assistants’ views and teacher identities.
Contact: y.kalender@liverpool.ac.uk
Website: https://sites.google.com/view/zykalender/home
Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=e4FV9JUAAAAJ&hl=en&
Andrew Low
Dr Andrew Low is a lecturer and researcher in physics education at the University of Liverpool. After completing his PhD in Theoretical Physics from QMUL, he spent several years working as a teacher and head of department in London. Andrew joined the Liverpool Physics Department in 2022 to take up the role of Director of Teaching Enhancement and his current interests in physics education research focus on:
- The use of undergraduate paired mentoring to support GCSE students from economic investment areas (The ASCENTS project).
- Uncovering educational awarding gaps and 'unaccounted for' grade inflation within UK institutions.
- Understanding the factors that impact student outcomes in undergraduate physics.
- The use of AI as a learning support tool.
- The development of original insights into the derivation and explanation of physics results for pedagogical teaching purposes.
Over the past few years Andrew has been working on a new educational project involving the development and creation of online educational videos explaining undergraduate and postgraduate topics in physics. His YouTube channel Physics Explained has over 180k subscribers, and his videos have been watched over ten million times.
Contact: andrew.low@liverpool.ac.uk
Website: https://www.youtube.com/c/PhysicsExplainedVideos
Publications: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7004-1399
Chris Edmonds
Contact: cse@liverpool.ac.uk
Faye Wearing
Dr. Faye Wearing is a lecturer and physics education researcher at the University of Liverpool. After completing her PhD in experimental nuclear structure physics, she spent five years training and working as a Clinical Scientist in the NHS specialising in radiotherapy physics. Faye joined the Physics Department in 2022 as a lecturer in Medical Physics at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Her physics education research interests include the underrepresentation of women in physics
Contact: faye.wearing@liverpool.ac.uk
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