Physics Teacher Education at Texas State University*

The Department of Physics at Texas State University has taken up physics teacher education as one of the core components of its mission. We have been running a Learning Assistant (LA) program in physics since 2012, we began as a comprehensive PhysTEC site in Fall 2015, and we have started a Noyce teacher scholarship program in Fall 2016. We have new degree programs with physics teacher certification and new physics courses for secondary and elementary teachers. The PhysTEC program includes building a community with area high school physics teachers to form bonds between prospective and practicing teachers. Research in our LA program has focused on understanding students’ developing ideas about teaching and learning to better understand how students are drawn into the education enterprise and, in some cases, into the teaching profession. Our program efforts have also revealed just how much difference can be made by forming productive relationships across campus with many different faculty, staff, and administrative offices.