Victoria M. Arbour, University of Glasgow

On May 20, 2026, the Scottish Universities Physics Alliance (SUPA) held its Annual Gathering at the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) in Paisley. In addition to other parallel theme sessions, the day featured a dedicated Physics Education Research (PER) theme, with eight talks and three posters representing researchers from Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Strathclyde, as well as a contribution from the Institute of Physics Scotland on the role of outreach in building the physics community across Scotland. It was amazing to see so much involvement in the PER theme! As someone relatively new to the Scottish PER community, I found this a wonderful introduction. I was impressed by both the breadth of the work being done and the genuine desire for collaboration, a sentiment also shared by Prof. James Miller, Principal and Vice Chancellor of UWS, more broadly about SUPA in his welcome address.

Table 1. Presentations at the 2026 SUPA Annual Gathering PER Theme Session.

One prevalent theme was taking the student experience as the primary lens, though from different angles. I opened the session with a proposal for an intervention in first-year physics labs to develop students’ feedback literacy and metacognition (Fig. 1). The intervention integrates explicit instruction on feedback literacy, the use of exemplars, and structured peer feedback, with effectiveness assessed using the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory and the Feedback Literacy Scale. (Sidenote: For me, one of the most valuable things about presenting a proposal rather than completed findings was the conversations it generated. Hearing how others in the room think about feedback and metacognition in their own contexts was genuinely useful.) Building on that focus, William Stafford (University of Edinburgh) presented his PhD thesis work on how physics undergraduates make key decisions during their degree, such as changing programmes, and factors affecting these choices. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with both students and staff, he emphasises the importance of supporting students through this difficult transition. Dr. Iain Moore (University of Strathclyde) then approached a related concern from the institutional side, presenting early findings from a project on student preparedness in undergraduate physics. An initial round-table discussion with physics educators surfaced three recurring themes: perception, teaching, and preparedness. Moore invited colleagues to join what he hopes will become a large-scale national collaborative study.

Some presenters grappled with questions of assessment design and what it means for students to genuinely reason in physics. Dr. Drew Rosen (University of Edinburgh) discussed the distinction between understanding and reasoning, and the considerable challenge of writing questions that can tell these apart (Fig. 1). His approach of developing paired screening and target questions to probe student reasoning is methodologically careful and practically useful. He, too, is seeking collaborators. Christopher Gamboa (University of Edinburgh) also presented a poster with related findings on student reasoning in kinematic graphing tasks, showing that arriving at a correct answer often requires overriding intuitive but misleading cues, a result with real implications for how we design and sequence problems. Additionally, Prof. Ross Galloway (University of Edinburgh) brought the session’s most timely issue with a study on whether AI can outperform undergraduates on questions isomorphic to Force Concept Inventory items (Fig. 1). The short answer is: often yes, but not reliably so, and crucially, AI models exhibited misaligned confidence, expressing certainty even when incorrect. For those of us thinking about the role of AI in undergraduate physics, this talk was well-timed and thought-provoking.

Dr. Linnea Soler and Dr. Smita Odedra (University of Glasgow, School of Chemistry) gave two talks and presented a poster, sharing a range of education research initiatives from Chemistry with clear relevance for physics educators. Their work on sensory, cognitive, and social loads in first-year labs resonated with me particularly. They have developed a virtual orientation platform that allows students to familiarise themselves with the lab environment before their first session, which strikes me as an innovative, low-barrier intervention with high potential impact, particularly for neurodivergent students. They also shared an online resource co-designed with a student to provide evidence-based guidance on what undergraduates should know to succeed in their programme, speaking to a growing recognition that the hidden curriculum of higher education should be made visible.

The poster session also offered a chance to dig further into questions of learning in practical contexts. My own poster presented findings on how computational exercises influence understanding of physics, suggesting that engaging with coding tasks improves or maintains students’ physics understanding. Even imperfect coding can support learning, while incorrect coding did not harm student understanding, and correct coding led to the greatest gains and more quantitative reasoning.

What struck me most about the SUPA PER theme session was not any single talk but the cumulative sense that there is a real community here, with overlapping interests and expertise, and a genuine willingness to work together. If you are in Scotland and are doing or are interested in PER and have not yet connected with this group, the next SUPA Annual Gathering would be a great place to start. I know it was for me.