There are more and more physicists addressing the problem of the failure of students to understand physics. Increasingly thorough and widespread research has shown that a majority of students have difficulty learning essential physical concep ts in the best of our traditional courses where students read textbooks, solve textbook problems, listen to well-prepared lectures, and do traditional laboratory activities. Evidence of the extent of these difficulties is presented. To address this prob lem we need to answer the questions: What physics concepts do our students understand? How can we know? and What can be done to promote such understanding? Research in physics education has lead to some successes both in identifying the problems and i ndicating the solutions. It is appropriate for these proceedings that some of the major successes for teaching physics concepts use the teaching laboratory. Many successes have involved active and collaborative learning by students. This paper will foc us on methods and curricula that support such learning by students and in most cases make use of Microcomputer-Based Laboratory (MBL) tools. Such MBL tools and carefully designed curricula have been used successfully to teach physics concepts to a wide v ariety of students in universities (small classes and large) and high schools. This paper will discuss methods where research data show substantial and persistent learning by students of basic physical concepts in mechanics and evidence that show these c oncepts are seldom learned well in traditional instruction.
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