What role should university physics departments play in the education of prospective K–12 science teachers? This is an important question to answer in view of various national agendas to improve the quality of science instruction for K–12 students. Although it would be easy to argue that physics departments have played an important role in offering content courses to prospective teachers, it could also be argued that the pedagogy used in teaching such courses has done little to encourage the type of teaching consistent with research on learning that we would like prospective teachers to adopt. In this article I begin by describing the attributes of an ideal, generic physics course for prospective K–12 teachers. Next I will attempt to justify why the particular attributes of this course were selected based on learning research. I then provide some specific examples of successful attempts to incorporate learning research in the design of university physics courses. A discussion follows of why, at the present time, the vast majority of physics departments are not poised to offer courses containing many of the attributes described, and suggestions are provided for how this situation could be alleviated. I conclude with a discussion of the obstacles and opportunities for reforming the role of physics departments in the education of prospective K–12 teachers.