A Community-Based Approach to Building the Capacity of Physics Teacher Preparation

East Texas A&M University, Commerce TX

Investigators

Abstract

A scientifically literate population and workforce is essential for the future health of the country, and continual efforts must be made to ensure high school education in STEM fields is of the highest quality. There is a dramatic shortage of high school physics teachers who have a degree in physics and count themselves as physics specialists. This problem is more acute in poorer and rural areas of the country. This project will address this issue in rural North-East Texas by building a community of physics students and teachers from local high schools, and community colleges. This community would provide support for students in the physics education degree. The community will focus on a shared activity; development of teaching materials to address physics concepts most students find difficult. These materials will be made freely available, and will help support both physics education majors and high school physics teachers, and lead to increased production of physics teachers. The goal of the project will be to create a community of practice from participants in a number of recently implemented projects related to teacher education in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. The projects will include the switch of calculus-based physics courses to studio mode and the creation of a learning assistant program in those classes, a new Master's program in Physics for in-service high school physics teachers, and the Texas Teacher Residency Program which provides stipends for students to be placed in STEM classrooms with mentor teachers while obtaining an education Masters. A Teacher-in-Residence (TIR) will help the project team build the community from students and teachers involved in these projects, and will base the community around the creation of educational materials for high school physics and college introductory physics courses which address areas of conceptual difficulty, provide communal teaching resources, and provide opportunities for participants to perform action research in their classrooms to measure the learning outcomes of those modules. This project will also continue the ongoing reformation the physics teacher preparation program at Texas A&M-Commerce to allow physics teachers to efficiently complete the program via courses that use best practice pedagogy, and to lower barriers to recruitment. The ultimate goal will be to develop a community of teachers and students informed by physics education research with access to free teaching materials, and ultimately increase the supply of physics-degree holding teachers in the state of Texas.