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EDITOR 
David E. Meltzer, Arizona State University 
ASSOCIATE EDITOR 
Peter S. Shaffer, University of Washington 
EDITORIAL BOARD 
Robert J. Beichner, North Carolina State University 
Karen Cummings, Southern Connecticut State University 
Andrew Elby, University of Maryland, College Park 
Fred M. Goldberg, San Diego State University 
Jill A. Marshall, University of Texas at Austin 
Valerie K. Otero, University of Colorado at Boulder 
Gene D. Sprouse, American Physical Society 
Richard N. Steinberg, City College of New York 
Jan Tobochnik, Kalamazoo College 
Stamatis Vokos, Seattle Pacific University 
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PhysTEC Preface
No one would have any trouble discerning the differences between how experimental physics was done a hundred years ago and 
how it is done today. Nor has physics itself stood still, with knowledge building with each experiment. Now step into a physics 
classroom of a century ago and one today and compare the two environments: The contrast is less stunning, to say the least. 
One could chalk it up to the idea that we had it pretty much perfect back then – so why change? Unfortunately, the evidence 
doesn’t support this idea; recently published results have demonstrated that there are, in fact, much better ways to educate stu-
dents that improve not only their understanding of physics, but also their attitudes toward the discipline and about the nature of 
science. 
Although physics education research (PER) is a comparatively new fi eld, with only a few hundred peer-reviewed publications to 
date, it is beginning to change the scene you encounter in many classrooms today. A large fraction of PER has focused on under-
graduate education and, in particular, on the introductory physics curriculum. Prior to the solicitation of papers for publication of 
this volume, very little research had been published in the United States that was specifi cally focused on physics teacher educa-
tion. The goal of the Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC) in publishing this collection is to help inspire a broadening 
of the scholarship that PER is already bringing to undergraduate physics to include more work in the area of teacher education. 
Integrated in this goal is the desire to bring recognition to faculty members who devote a portion of their professional lives to 
educating teachers, and to understanding how best to improve the teacher education processes that exist in universities today. Our 
hope is to help build for teacher education the type of foundation enjoyed in experimental physics today that distinguishes it so 
readily from the physics of a century ago.
PhysTEC was launched in 2000 as a response to probably the most signifi cant crisis facing physics education and the physics 
community in the United States: a pervasive and acute shortage of well prepared high school physics teachers. PhysTEC was 
sponsored initially by the American Physical Society (APS), American Association of Physics Teachers, and American Institute 
of Physics, and funded by the National Science Foundation and individual and corporate donations to the APS’s Campaign for 
the 21
st
Century. Today, more than a decade later, the project has demonstrated signifi cant success in advancing model teacher 
education efforts at more than twenty institutions nationwide. 
This book was conceived in 2005 as one of several related efforts of the PhysTEC project to build recognition of, and to inspire 
and disseminate scholarship centered on teacher education efforts. The project hopes that the community will continue to recog-
nize and value the need for increased scholarship and improvement of practice so that as time proceeds, we will see real differ-
ences in how teachers are educated and supported as they prepare the scientifi cally literate citizenry of future generations.
The PhysTEC project would like to publicly thank this work’s editor Professor David Meltzer, his associate editor Professor 
Peter Schaffer, and the book’s Editorial Board for their hard work and diligence in pursuing the details of this volume and in 
establishing and maintaining the high standards that scholarship of this type must embody to provide appropriate recognition 
within the community. We would also like to thank the National Science Foundation and numerous private donors for supporting 
PhysTEC and, consequently, this effort. 
Finally, we acknowledge the tremendous effort by the many professionals in the fi eld who spend a good fraction of their profes-
sional life educating future teachers. Their devotion to educating teachers and to building the scholarship of teacher education, 
while often neither recognized nor appropriately rewarded, is an inspiration to us all. Thank you.
Theodore Hodapp
Director of Education and Diversity
American Physical Society
PhysTEC Project Director
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