David Hammer
 dhpic

204 Paige Hall, Tufts University, Medford MA 02155 david.hammer@tufts.edu; 617-627-2396.

I’m a professor at Tufts, in the departments of Education and Physics & Astronomy, and co-director of the Institute for Research on Learning and Instruction. 

My research is on learning and teaching in STEM fields (mostly physics) across ages from young children through adults. Much of my focus has been on intuitive "epistemologies," how instructors interpret and respond to student thinking, and resource-based models of knowledge and reasoning.

This is a list of my publications, with links to some files. If you’re interested and not sure where to start, try Case Studies of Children’s Inquiries or Student Resources for Learning Introductory Physics. For classroom videos, check out Students Doing Science or the earlier Responsive Teaching in Science. And this is a "virtual classroom visit" to Physics 11 from about 10 years ago.

Some recent papers:

Tang, X. & Hammer, D. (2023). “I think of it that way and it helps me understand”: Anthropomorphism in elementary students' mechanistic stories.Science Education. Link to article.

Appleby, L, Gouvea, J., Caspari-Gnann, I., Tobin, R. & Hammer, D. (in press). Instructor listening during lecture: A case from introductory chemistry. Journal of College Science Teaching. Preprint.

Button, J, Pamuk Turner, D., & Hammer, D. (2023). How chemists handle not-knowing in reasoning about a novel problem. Chemistry Education Research and Practice, 24, 956-970. Link to article.

Suárez, E., Quan, G., Atkins Elliott, L., & Hammer, D. (2023). Learning in interaction: Interacting lines of research. In M. F. Tasar & P. R. L. Heron (Eds) International Handbook of Physics Education Research: Learning Physics. Melville, NY: American Institute of Physics. Link to the chapter.

Hammer, D. (2023). The necessarily, wonderfully unsettled state of methodology in PER: A reflection. In M. F. Tasar & P. R. L. Heron (Eds.) International Handbook of Physics Education Research: Special Topics. (pp. 22.1-22.12). Melville, NY: American Institute of Physics. Link to the chapter.