Aps-ajp-11-1001-Book indb

Summary of “Design principles for effective physics instruction: 
A case from physics and everyday thinking,” Fred Goldberg, Valerie Otero, 
and Stephen Robinson, pp. 33–45.
This article describes a curriculum (Physics and Everyday 
Thinking, PET) and its implementation in a course for elemen-
tary school teachers. PET incorporates fi ndings from research 
in cognitive science and science education which indicate that, 
in order to have signifi cant impact on student learning, teachers 
must create learning environments in which students are actively 
engaged in the construction of science concepts. This article 
illustrates how such instruction can be modeled effectively for 
teachers so as to deepen their understanding of basic physics 
concepts as well as enhance their attitudes about science.
Physics and Everyday Thinking is a semester-long, 
guided inquiry-based curriculum that focuses on the themes 
of interactions, energy, forces, and fi elds. It is intended for 
broad use in general education physics courses and more 
specifi cally in courses for prospective and practicing ele-
mentary teachers. There are two major goals. The fi rst is 
a content goal: to help teachers develop a set of physics 
ideas that can be applied to explain a wide range of phe-
nomena, in particular, those that are typically included in 
elementary school science curricula. Each of the chapters 
in PET is designed to address one or more of the big ideas 
in physics contained in the National Science Education 
Standards and the AAAS Benchmarks for Science Literacy.
Each big idea (e.g., the Law of Conservation of Energy 
or Newton’s Second Law) is broken down into a series of 
smaller sub-ideas, which serve as targets for one or more 
individual activities in that chapter. The second major goal 
of PET focuses on learning about learning: to help teachers 
become more aware of how their own physics ideas change 
and develop, how children think about science ideas, and 
how knowledge is developed within a scientifi c commu-
nity. About three quarters of the activities in PET are aimed 
at achieving the content goal. The remainder specifi cally 
target learning about learning.
The structure of the PET curriculum, the structure of each 
activity, and the pedagogical approach to teaching and learning 
were informed by fi ve major design principles derived from 
results from research in cognitive science and science educa-
tion. These principles are built on the idea that teachers must 
create learning environments in which students articulate, 
defend, and modify their ideas as a means for actively con-
structing the main ideas that are the goals of instruction. The 
paper describes the design principles and illustrates how they 
are integrated into the structure of the curriculum. Case studies 
of teachers working through the activities illustrate how the 
principles play out in the classroom. (Note: In the paper and in 
the following discussion, the “students” are preservice elemen-
tary school teachers in a university course based on PET.)