New PTEC collection resources

Preparing Teachers to Develop a Successful Physics Program in an Urban Classroom

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:16:22 EST

This session presented at the 2010 PTEC Conference focused on the challenges, opportunities, and unique needs that associated with building and maintaining a physics program in an urban classroom. The panel was composed of physics and physical science teachers who have taught in urban school districts. Among others, the session addressed such questions as: "What makes the students in an urban environment unique?" "What are some successful strategies for teaching physics in an urban classroom?" and "What can physics departments and colleges of education do to help prepare future physics teachers to be successful in an urban classroom?"

UTeach Replication

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:10:50 EST

UTeach is a program for the preparation of secondary science and mathematics teachers at The University of Texas at Austin. It is currently being replicated at 17 universities across the United States with funding sources that include grants from the National Math and Science Initiative and state sources in Texas and Tennessee. I will discuss the design of the replication process, progress of replication to date, and provide suggestions both on how to respond successfully to new calls for proposals and how to help generate new calls for proposals.

Physics Pedagogical Content Knowledge

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:49:13 EST

This 2010 PTEC Conference workshop's participants learned about the concept of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and how this concept relates to the preparation of physics teachers. PCK is what distinguishes a content expert from an expert teacher of that content. Some aspects of physics PCK include knowledge of student ideas in different areas of physics, knowledge of effective instructional methods that help students master fundamental physics ideas and ways of reasoning, and knowledge of assessment of student learning. The participants also learned how to design a course/a sequence of courses for future physics teachers where they start building their physics PCK.

PTEC 2010 Poster Abstracts

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 19:04:17 EST

The posters presented at the 2010 PTEC Conference included:

A Course in Physics Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Urban Chicago In-Service Teachers
Bilingual education as one of the basic components in the training future teachers of physics in the modernization of Russian education
Designing Educative Inquiry-Based Practicum: Prospective Teachers’ Learning and Attitude
Developing New, Well Qualified Physics Teachers at Sacramento State
Enhancements to Physics Pathway, Web-based Assistance for Teachers of Physics
Fostering Engagement in an Online Science Course
Hate is a strong word, but I really don’t like physics
Improving Physics Teacher Education in a Small Department - Community Suggestions
Improving the Teaching of Physics (Project ITOP)
Kennesaw State University’s MAT in Physics
Engineering in Schools
NASA Educator Ambassador Program
PER and Teacher Prep
Professional Development Should Begin at the Undergraduate Level: Preparing future STEM Teachers for the Challenges and Rewards Ahead
QUEST: Quality Elementary Science Teaching
Why Do You Want to Be a Physics Teacher?

Full author information and abstracts are available in the Conference Poster Abstract PDF.

PhysTEC Proposal Preparation

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:47:51 EST

This presentation from the 2010 PTEC Conference provides guidelines for preparing proposals for PhysTEC funding.

NSF Noyce RFP & Mock Panel Review

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:45:40 EST

The National Science Foundation's Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program seeks to encourage talented science, technology, engineering, and mathematics majors and STEM professionals to become preK-12 mathematics and science teachers. This 2010 PTEC Conference workshop was designed to foster an understanding of the features of the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program in order to assist interested participants in developing their ideas for projects and proposal preparation. Following an overview of the major elements of the program, including the new NSF Teaching Fellowships and Master Teaching Fellowships track, a sample funded proposal was used to launch discussion of the features of an effective proposal. The session concluded with a brief look at additional funding opportunities offered by the NSF in support of teacher education.

NSF Math & Science Partnership Updates

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:44:04 EST

James Hamos, a member of the Math and Science Partnership (MSP) Program Staff from NSF's Division of Undergraduate Education, and Gay Stewart, the Principal Investigator of an MSP project entitled "College Ready in Mathematics and Physics Partnership," shared the origins of the broad program and specific project. Participants learned about several outcomes emanating from the NSF investment in the MSP program and future opportunities for funding and features of successful proposals in the highly competitive MSP competitions.

Achievement Gap in Texas

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:40:52 EST

This 2010 PTEC Conference presentation discusses data, mainly from Texas, and mainly from high-stakes mathematics tests, that illustrate the very different educational outcomes for well-off and low-income students. A range of descriptive statistics that describe student performance within a single year is presented before longitudinal data is examined. Some of the questions addressed include:

What are the grades at which low-income students fall behind the fastest?
Do ethnic background and low income have independent effects on student outcomes?
How do charter schools compare with ordinary public schools?
Which students are disappearing from the school system, and when does it happen?
Is the pressure of the accountability system having an effect on college readiness?
Which are the high-performing schools and forward-looking educational policies that will increase, for example, the numbers of research physicists?

Averages and results for schools throughout Texas are presented.

Teacher Quality and Student Performance

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:38:34 EST

How do we develop reliable and informative measures of teacher effectiveness? How do we apply what is already known about teacher effectiveness to teachers of physics? How do we use measures of teacher effectiveness to inform teacher education programs? The session will begin with a presentation from Jennifer Presley, former Director of the Illinois Education Research Council (IERC). Under Presley's leadership, the IERC developed a school Teacher Quality Index (TQI), and conducted studies that show a clear relationship between TQI and student achievement and college readiness. TQI distribution is strongly linked to school poverty levels and very high percent minority schools, implicating teacher quality as a major factor in the achievement gap. The IERC results will inspire and inform a discussion on the posed questions led by Monica Plisch, co-PI of the PhysTEC project.

ACS and the Chemistry Teacher Education Coalition

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:36:36 EST

Chemistry plays a pivotal role in STEM education. However, as in physics, there is a considerable shortage of highly qualified high school chemistry teachers in our nation. The American Chemical Society (ACS) and its Society Committee on Education (SOCED) recognize the critical role of the chemistry community in preparing the high school chemistry teachers of tomorrow and are exploring the creation of CTEC (Chemistry Teacher Education Coalition), modeled after the very successful PTEC project. What should be the strategic goals, objectives, and activities for CTEC? What are the elements of a successful CTEC project for supporting and improving chemistry teacher education? How can CTEC partner with PTEC to further our mutual objectives?

PTEC Preservice STEM Teacher Recruitment Workshop 2010: Worksheet for Teacher Recruitment Strategies

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:26:29 EST

This worksheet from the PTEC Preservice STEM Teacher Recruitment Workshop is designed to help implement the 5 strategies for STEM teacher recruitment.

Notes on strategies for STEM teacher recruitment

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:25:19 EST

These notes from the PTEC Preservice STEM Teacher Recruitment Workshop specify 5 strategies for STEM teacher recruitment. Accompanying each strategy is information on what is needed to implement the strategy and what audience the strategy targets.

UTeach Replication - UKanTeach

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:23:25 EST

The supply of secondary math and science teachers has become a critical concern in most states around the nation. This is particularly true in the physical sciences (chemistry, geology and physics), where the modest numbers of bachelor's degree majors produced annually results in the production of a commensurately small number of secondary teachers. The UKanTeach program, designed as a replication of the UTeach licensure program developed at the University of Texas at Austin, represents a model that could help to address this shortage of secondary math and science teachers. UKanTeach allows students to pursue a B.A. or B.S. major in any area of science or mathematics while completing the coursework required for teacher licensure. This entire program is designed to be completed in four years. Now at the beginning of its third year of implementation, the program has more than doubled the size of cohorts of preservice secondary math and science teachers at the University of Kansas. The program makes use of extensive recruitment through mailings, information tables at freshman orientation and direct appeals to students enrolled in introductory science and mathematics courses. Juniors and seniors enrolled in UKanTeach now act as peer recruiters, presenting 5-minute introductions to the program prior to science and math sections. Approximately 150 individual presentations are made each semester. This combination of strategies has helped UKanTeach consistently outpace its recruitment goals over the past two years.

Seeing the science in children’s thinking

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:15:09 EST

This work is motivated by two well-established findings. First, by the time children reach elementary school, they've grown rich in intellectual resources for learning science. Consider it: They know that if you throw a rock it keeps moving, but if you throw a balloon it doesn't; that it would hurt to kick a bowling ball, what it feels like to ride in a moving vehicle, that you cannot suck peanut butter through a straw, and so on and on: It is a vast amount of knowledge. Second, by the time students reach college they have mostly learned to set that knowledge aside. Extensive evidence shows students in introductory physics courses treating the material as divorced from their experience. There is not smoking-gun evidence for why, but one conjecture seems likely: Time and again, science instruction systematically ignores or, worse, disdains students' experiential knowledge. Much of the challenge is in recognition. In its unrefined form, the beginnings of science in children's thinking can be difficult to notice. It's something like walking through a lush forest looking for food: If you know how to recognize it, there's plenty! If you don't, you'll walk right by it, or, worse, you'll trample it down. We have developed the start of a "field guide" to the beginnings of science as it shows up in children's thinking, using video from 1st-8th grade classes. For this workshop, I'll show examples of children's thinking and discuss how we use these materials in elementary teacher education.

Efforts to Train Teachers for Rural School Environments

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:12:34 EST

This 2010 PTEC Conference presentation addresses the task of physics teacher preparation in a rural school setting. The challenges the schools and teachers encounter, the efforts BYU and Utah State Office of Education have implemented to the preparation and mentoring of new physics teachers are discussed. Examples of young teachers and their efforts are discussed and the methods that they are learning to teach with are highlighted. Finally a look at how BYU addresses this issue and the comparison between the two types of teacher preparation tracks are reviewed.

The Compass Project

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:10:06 EST

In this presentation, members of the Compass Project discuss ways to support underrepresented undergraduates in physics, especially at the critical freshman transition. The data presented is in the context of The Compass Project, a program created at the University of California, Berkeley in 2006. Drawing on physics education research, the project had two major goals in creating a two-week summer program for incoming freshman: building community and helping students develop productive beliefs about what physics is and how to learn it. Recently, an innovative semester-long course on physics problem-solving was developed to help the Compass students develop their critical thinking skills (and continue to build community) throughout the academic year. Starting with a first seed group of eleven students, the project members have mentored and encouraged undergraduates as they continue to make a positive impact on the Berkeley physical science departments by bringing other students into the Compass community, volunteering at inner-city schools, and even running a lecture series aimed at an undergraduate audience.

Educate to Innovate: Addressing a Historic Challenge Through A National Effort

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:02:27 EST

Kumar Garg, of the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, made this presentation at the 2010 PTEC Conference.

Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:29:53 EST

The joint APS-AAPT-AIP Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP) outlined their findings and recommendations from the T-TEP Report in this presentation made at the 2010 Physics Teacher Education Coalition Conference. The two-year effort investigated the current status of physics teacher education in the United States, collected relevant research findings, and identified major local strengths, as well as significant systemic challenges.

National Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics: Report Synopsis

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 13:13:48 EST

Except for a handful of isolated pockets of excellence, the national system of preparing physics teachers is largely inefficient, mostly incoherent, and massively unprepared to deal with the current and future needs of the nation’s students. Physics departments, schools of education, university administrators, school systems, state agencies, the federal government, as well as business and foundations, have indispensable collaborative roles to play so that every high school student has the opportunity to learn physics with a qualified teacher. This document provides a synopsis of the findings and recommendations of the National Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics.

Mentoring Preservice Teachers of Primary Science

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:00:26 EST

Perceptions of mentors' practices related to primary science teaching were obtained from final year preservice teachers after a 4-week practicum. Responses to a survey (n=59), constructed through literature-based practices and attributes of effective mentors, identified perceived strengths and weaknesses in the area of mentoring pre-service teachers of primary science. Through exploratory factor analysis, this pilot study also tested the unidimensionality of mentoring practices and attributes assigned to categories (factors) that may characterize mentoring in primary science teaching. These suggested factors, namely, personal attributes, system requirements, pedagogical knowledge, modeling, and feedback had Cronbach alpha coefficients of internal consistency reliability of 0.93, 0.78, 0.94, 0.90, and 0.81 respectively. Survey responses indicated that mentors generally do not provide specific mentoring in primary science teaching. It is argued that science education reform requires the identification of factors and associated attributes and practices of mentoring primary science in order to effectively develop pre-service teachers in primary science teaching.