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Improving the preparation of K-12 teachers through physics
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Improving the preparation of K-12 teachers through physics
education research Lillian C. McDermott, Paula R. L. Heron, Peter S. Shaffer, and MacKenzie R. Stetzer Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-1560 共Received 28 November 2005; accepted 5 May 2006兲 Physics education research can contribute to efforts by college and university faculty to improve the preparation of K-12 teachers to teach physics and physical science. Examples from topics included in precollege and university curricula are used to demonstrate the need to help K-12 teachers deepen their understanding of basic physics, to illustrate how research-based instructional materials can assist in this process, and to examine the impact on student learning in K-12 classrooms. © 2006 American Association of Physics Teachers. 关DOI: 10.1119/1.2209244兴 I. INTRODUCTION Noting that “teachers are the key to improving student performance,” several recent reports have called for greatly increasing the number of teachers able to teach science. 1 Pro- ducing well-qualified teachers is a complex task that in- volves college and university faculty, experienced teachers, and school administrators. Ideally, K-12 certification is based on a sound undergraduate education that is supplemented by specialized courses. The process of becoming an effective teacher continues through early mentoring and ongoing pro- fessional development. This paper focuses on an aspect of the process that requires direct involvement by physics faculty. 2 We illustrate how research conducted in physics de- partments can help identify and address the intellectual prob- lems that teachers 共and students兲 encounter with the con- cepts, reasoning, and formal representations of physics. The Physics Education Group at the University of Wash- ington 共UW兲 has been engaged in preparing K-12 teachers to teach physics and physical science by inquiry for more than 30 years. 3 The environment in which our interactions with teachers take place has provided an ongoing opportunity to examine how prospective and practicing teachers think about physics and to develop curriculum based on this research. The work described here involved prospective and practicing K-12 teachers, introductory students in calculus-based phys- ics, and physics graduate students. The preservice high school teachers were enrolled in a special physics course that consists of students with a major or minor in physics, math- ematics, or other sciences. The inservice teachers were par- ticipants in an intensive six-week NSF Summer Institute, for which admission is nationally competitive. The undergradu- ate and graduate students were enrolled at UW and at other universities. Several of the examples given here have been discussed in papers in which the emphasis was on undergraduate education. 4–8 However, most of the data related to K-12 teachers have not been published and are presented as evi- dence of the need for, and utility, of providing special prepa- ration in physics and physical science for teachers. 9 Download 231.88 Kb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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