Recherche et développement en didactique de la physique à l'université ; résultats et tendances / Research and development in Physics Didactics at University; issues and trends

University physics education world-wide is in a process of development and change. Important deficiencies of university teaching are often a low level of motivation followed by decreasing enrolement numbers, and a lack of qualitative understanding of basic concepts in physics. Physics didactics can contribute to improvement with development of new teaching approaches and research about motivation of students and their understanding of basic concepts. The following article discusses relevant directions of research, related research questions and exemplary results. Lectures and labwork deserve careful thoughts to become more motivating for students and more effective for learning. Important principles are more interactive forms of teaching in lectures and more efforts to connect theory and practice during labwork, not only with «hands-on», but also with «minds-on».