Secondary Education

The Secondary Education Program at UNR is committed to preparing teachers who are able to meet the challenges of today's classrooms. The teacher education faculty provides an educational program that enables students to: develop a strong foundation of knowledge about teaching and learning; display a love of learning; value democracy and pluralism; and engage in reflective practice about one's growth as a teacher. To accomplish this, the program offers students: A strong liberal arts education with emphasis in the particular academic discipline in which the student will be teaching; background in the foundations of secondary education; methods for instruction in the academic disciplines; background in educational psychology and human development; methods for educating culturally diverse and special needs populations; methods for effective use of technology in instructional settings; and experience teaching in public schools.

Professional Development

Physics faculty helped lead two workshops called "From Stars to the Classroom" with teachers at all levels of K-12. This latter project was funded by Hubble Space Telescope (STSci)/NASA and the course materials are being developed as a website resource [LINK TO http://www.scienceportal-one.org/ ] for teachers and students.

Undergraduate Course Development

Physics, College of Education, and electrical engineering faculty member have obtained grant funding with the goal of developing an activity based learning courses in physics and other science and technology areas.

Secondary Science Curriculum Development

The medical school, the college of education, the biology department, chemistry department and the physics department (funded by Eisenhower grant), have collaborated to design a physics course for teachers using more hands on educational techniques and dispelling common misconceptions. The course is still under development and has not yet been offered.

Courses and Services for Local Teachers

A physics faculty member started a collaboration with a local private high school to develop an astronomy offering by working with and training their general science and physics faculty members.

The program "Science Partners" pairs upper division science students with elementary school teachers for one semester. They present all of the science content to their class for the term, working to help the teacher and to help develop the teacher's understanding as well as the students. Some of these students have found that they are "naturals" in the classroom and have considered teaching as a career path (though it is still early to see how many have followed through with those plans).

Some of the abovementioned work is with "inservice" teachers but the workshop and course development will likely be applied more to pre-service teachers as the collaborations develop.

Outreach

Our department also operates a "Taking Physics on the Road" traveling physics demo show for all levels.