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.

Any first/2nd year grads (or last year u-grads) should seriously consider apply for an NSF GRF http://www.nsf.gov/funding/pgm_summ.jsp?pims_id=6201 

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 Research Council: National Science Education Standards (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!

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 Abover the Gathering Strom (NRC website or 13.5MB archive here) 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"

TIMMS 2003 - some recent 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! (5 years old and already looking quaint?)