Bulletin of the American Physical Society
77th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Section of the APS
Volume 55, Number 10
Wednesday–Saturday, October 20–23, 2010; Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Session CB: What Can We Do About the Dearth of Qualified High School Physics Teachers (and High School Physics Students)? |
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Chair: John Thacker, Southeastern Louisiana University Room: Nicholson Hall 109 |
Thursday, October 21, 2010 10:45AM - 11:15AM |
CB.00001: National Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics Invited Speaker: Except for a handful of isolated pockets of excellence, the national system of preparing physics teachers is largely inefficient, mostly incoherent, and massively unprepared to deal with the current and future needs of the nation's students. Physics departments, schools of education, university administrators, school systems, state agencies, the federal government, as well as business and foundations, have indispensable collaborative roles to play so that every high school student has the opportunity to learn physics with a qualified teacher. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, October 21, 2010 11:15AM - 11:45AM |
CB.00002: The Status of Geaux Teach: Adventures in Revamping the Secondary Education Physics Concentration Invited Speaker: For the past five years, L.S.U. has been engaged in revamping its secondary education science teaching program for its science majors. Our new program, Geaux Teach, (www.lsu.edu/secondaryed/) is modeled after the GoTeach program at U.T. Austin. This status report will discuss our prior program, how we got started, where we are now, what is left to do, and the changes we have seen. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, October 21, 2010 11:45AM - 12:15PM |
CB.00003: The PhysTEC Teacher Education Program at FIU Invited Speaker: The FIU PhysTEC Project is an integral component of the Physics Department's educational transformation that has led to more than a ten-fold increase in majors. The transformation seeks to increase the quality and quantity of physics majors and future physics teachers, including those from historically underrepresented groups. Elements of the efforts include transformed introductory physics courses, establishment of a physics research and learning community, engagement of stakeholders spanning high school through the university administration, and advocacy by a physics education research group. The PhysTEC Project supports future physics teachers through a Learning Assistant program coupled to newly revised secondary education programs. The Learning Assistant program is an experiential program that recruits new students into teaching careers while providing a mechanism for transforming courses - undergraduates experience the rewards and intellectual challenges of teaching through providing interactive engagement learning experiences for their peers in introductory physics courses. Students that continue in the program enroll in a multidisciplinary teacher preparation program and may receive significant financial support. FIU is a minority-serving urban public research institution in Miami, Florida serving over 39,000 students, of which 64{\%} are Hispanic, 13{\%} are Black, and 56{\%} are women. Programmatic strategies and impacts of the program will be provided. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, October 21, 2010 12:15PM - 12:45PM |
CB.00004: ``But you're just a physics booster!'' -- Why political advocacy for high school physics is crucial Invited Speaker: There is no shortage of research-based arguments supporting the importance of high school physics. A study from the University of South Florida demonstrates the importance of high school physics for the preparation of future STEM professionals [1]. A white paper from the National Academy of Education [2] states that the usual biology-chemistry-physics sequence in high school is ``out of order'' and points out that students in 9$^{th}$ grade biology classes are taught concepts that make no sense to them because they ``know little about atoms and next to nothing about the chemistry and physics that can help them make sense of these structures and their functions.'' Nevertheless, in Florida the high school physics-taking rate has been declining for several years and a large fraction of the International Baccalaureate programs do not even offer IB Physics. I will argue that physicists must collectively advocate in the political arena for the expansion and improvement of high school physics. I will also provide a few examples of collective actions by scientists that may have influenced the formulation of the new high school graduation requirements in Florida. Finally, I will argue that we must lobby our colleagues in the Colleges of Education to devote their scarce resources to recruiting and training teachers in the physical sciences. \\[4pt] [1] W. Tyson, R. Lee, K.M. Borman, and M.A. Hanson, \textit{Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk} 12, 243 (2007). \\[0pt] [2] National Academy of Education White Paper ``Science and Mathematics Education,'' (http://www.naeducation.org/Science{\_}and{\_}Mathematics{\_}Education{\_}White{\_}Paper.pdf). [Preview Abstract] |
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