Workshops: Using Physics Education Research to Improve High and Middle School Physics

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

An online workshop with approximately 100 participants to be held July 13-17, 2020 and an in person week-long workshop with approximately 25 people will provide a series of sessions from leading learning scientists, education researchers, and physics education researchers on evidence-based pedagogical strategies to transform high school physics curricula across representative high schools and set the stage for the creation of an inclusive network to support and improve physics education in high school and middle school. The workshops will contribute toward addressing the considerable shortage of high school physics educators in every state in the U.S., even though enrollments in high school physics have been steadily increasing since the 1980s. In addition to a shortage of high school physics teachers in the U.S. and increased student enrollments, less than half of high school physics courses in the U.S. are taught by an educator with a physics degree. The short-term goals are to provide access to relevant evidence-based teaching practices to transform high school physics curricula, as well as to strengthen partnerships between high school teachers, their professional peers, and leading physics education researchers. Workshop partnerships have the potential to spark novel ideas for curricular interventions and potential interventions that could inform scaled up initiatives. Workshop participants will also have the option of participating in a research study focused on understanding current challenges for physics high school teachers. In addition to improving physics high school curriculum the second aim is to better understand how to overcome challenges faced by high school teachers and to develop partnerships between high school educators and higher education experts to increase the number of students who have access to a quality physics education. As a result of bringing these different communities into a single workshop, the set of diverse perspectives will be a source of innovation focused at solving challenges that go beyond access to physics education and affect STEM success at the university level, long-term. The intellectual merit of the workshops is provided by the emphasis on expert leaders in the learning sciences, educational researchers, and physics education researchers. The aim is to close the gap between the use of teaching methods in high school physics that benefit fewer students and increase curricular innovations, based on the presentation of leading educational researchers, to foster what is known about the most effective and high impact study skills, motivation, peer-to-peer learning, and persistence in physics. The PI plans to incorporate peer-to-peer learning to start discussions amongst workshop participants and also plans to collect, analyze, and disseminate their curricular redesigns. The participants will help the workshop community identify the challenges that need to be addressed given the increases in student demands for access to physics high school classrooms. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.