Here I present my work identifying and addressing student difficulties with several materials science and physics topics. In the first part of this thesis, I present my work identifying student difficulties and misconceptions about the directional relationships between net force, velocity, and acceleration in one dimension. This is accomplished primarily through the discussion of the development, validation, and results of implementation of the FVA test, a research-oriented multiple-choice assessment instrument. In the second part of this thesis, I present my work identifying and addressing student difficulties in materials science through the design, implementation, and assessment of group work concept oriented tutorials. These tutorials were designed to mimic the tutorials developed by the University of Washington and the University of Maine and known to be effective in physics education. In addition, these tutorials include several teaching techniques found to be effective in physics education such as multiple representations, cognitive conflict, i.e. elicit-confront-resolve, and student dialog questions. While these tutorials still have a lot of room for improvement, the results suggest that these tutorials and recitation methods are effective in teaching students the difficult and important conceptual materials which they were designed to address. Furthermore, since the general design process used was not specific to that of materials science, there are wider implications that this process may be successful for a wide range of STEM courses. In this second part, I also discuss the development of a second multiple-choice assessment instrument which is designed to be more of an instructional tool, although it has been used for research as well to assess student conceptual understanding of the introductory materials science and engineering course.