Teaching and Learning Physics

Resources for the course

General:

If you don't want/can't afford to buy the Redish book, an older (draft) version is available online here.

A variety of different observation protocols for fieldwork observations. And a comprehensive study here: methodology for education research. From the NSF and US Dept of Ed (2013).

Any first/2nd year grads (or last year u-grads) should seriously consider apply for an NSF GRF  

John D. Bransford , Ann L. Brown , Rodney R. Cocking (ed.) How People Learn. (2000) From the National Academy Press.
[hint: great resource for Final Projects]

National Academies DBER Study:Status, Contributions, and Future Direction of Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER) (2012)
and a follow-up Practitioner volume: Reaching Students: What Research Says About Effective Instruction in Undergraduate Science and Engineering (2015)

National Academies PER Study (2013)

National Research Council: Frameworks for Next Generation Standards for K12 (2011) and the actual standards (2013)

National Research Council: National Science Education Standards (1996, K12)
"Standards" refers to the detailed, officially agreed upon learning goals in K-12 teaching, separated by topic and grade level. (K-12 teachers are very aware of Standards!

R.R. Hake, "Interactive-engagement vs traditional methods: A six-thousand-student survey of mechanics test data for introductory physics courses," Am. J. Phys. 66, 64-74 (1998)
The journal article that had a huge impact on Physics teaching everywhere - showing us that traditional lecturing was often not doing what we thought it was!

L.C. McDermott and E.F. Redish, "Resource Letter PER-1: Physics Education Research," Am. J. Phys. 67, 755-767 (1999)
A compilation of many articles from PER, handy for your bibliography and background research in your final project!

D. Meltzer and R. Thornton, "Resource Letter ALIP–1: Active-Learning Instruction in Physics" Am J Phys, 80(6) ,478, (2012) [you need to download from campus IP]

Maryland website with more papers than you can shake a stick at.


Week by week:

Resources relevant to week 1, if you want to dig deeper:

Rising Above the Gathering Storm.  (13.5 MB, big file!) Politically very influential, recent Nat'l Academy report that put science education right up in the forefront of issues for "re-energizing America".

Tapping America's Potential . "60% of future jobs will require training that only 20% of today's workers possess."  "If we take our scientific and technological supremacy for granted, we risk losing it" (a 10 year prediction from 2005)!!!

TIMMS 2003 - some data on 4th and 8th grade students around the world in math and science

Urgent Action:  Comprehensive summary of many documents (including the one above)

An editorial on science, funding, policy, and yes, our class! (a fewyears old and already looking quaint?)