Preparing future teachers to anticipate student difficulties in physics in a graduate-level course in physics, pedagogy, and education research Documents

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Preparing future teachers to anticipate student difficulties in physics in a graduate-level course in physics, pedagogy, and education research 

written by John R. Thompson, Warren M. Christensen, and Michael C. Wittmann

We describe courses designed to help future teachers reflect on and discuss both physics content and student knowledge thereof. We use three kinds of activities: reading and discussing the literature, experiencing research-based curricular materials, and learning to use the basic research methods of physics education research. We present a general overview of the two courses we have designed as well as a framework for assessing student performance on physics content knowledge and one aspect of pedagogical content knowledge - knowledge of student ideas - about one particular content area: electric circuits. We find that the quality of future teachers' responses, especially on questions dealing with knowledge of student ideas, can be successfully categorized and may be higher for those with a nonphysics background than those with a physics background.

Released under a J. R. Thompson, W. M. Christensen, and M. C. Wittmann, "Preparing future teachers to anticipate student difficulties in physics in a graduate-level course in physics, pedagogy, and education research," PRST-PER 7 (1): 010108, 10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.7.010108 is published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Published May 20, 2011
Last Modified May 2, 2012

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Supplemental Documents

Appendix to "Preparing future teachers to anticipate student difficulties in physics in a graduate-level course in physics, pedagogy, and education research" 

This appendix contains a sample of the take-home component of the exam.

Released under a This file is published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. The primary article is: J. R. Thompson, W. M. Christensen, and M. C. Wittmann, "Preparing future teachers to anticipate student difficulties in physics in a graduate-level course in physics, pedagogy, and education research," PRST-PER 7 (1): 010108, 10.1103/PhysRevSTPER.7.010108.

Published May 20, 2011
Last Modified May 2, 2012