中文摘要：

“物理教育研究”是物理学的一个新学科分支，诞生于美国，研究的是物理学习的过程以及教学活动如何影响该过程。它采用科学的方法探测、甄别学生学习物理课程中普遍存在的共性困难，揭示学习物理知识的动力学过程，评价学习效果，并在此基础上建立关于物理学习的认知理论，用于开发新课程、新教学方法和新的教育研究工具。在美国国家自然科学基金的资助下，美国的“物理教育研究”这一新的学科分支迅速成长，取得了较多进展，并且将研究成果应用于美国高等学校的物理教学之中。在中国，“物理教育研究”还是一个相对陌生的研究领域。文章概述了“物理教育研究”在美国的发展历史与取得的进展，以及它如何促进美国大学物理教学的进步，希望该文能为发展中国的物理教育和提高中国的物理教学质量提供有益的参考。

英文摘要：

Physics education research （PER） is a new subbranch of physics that emerged in the United States. It studies how students learn physics, probes and analyses the common diffi-culties in learning and applying physics knowledge, examines learning gains, and evaluates vari-ous teaching technologies and methods. Based on the data acquired, theories on physics learn-ing are developed. Under support mainly from the National Science Foundation of the USA, PER is becoming a fast growing field of scholarly research bearing fruits, which have been used in the teaching of physics in universities. Now, PER is still a new research field in China. This article aims to introduce the reader to the field of PER. Topics include its brief history, what it is, its various methods and recent developments, and its impact on college-level physics teaching. The achievements in PER in the US may be of value for the physics education reform in China.