Dot Physics

Ok, this is a post about a particular curriculum, in particular Physics for Everyday Thinking. Let me start with a story.

Some time ago, our college of education was going through an NCATE accreditation review. For some reason, they needed a science course that was just for education majors. As it so happens, we (the department of Chemistry and Physics) already had a similar course that was in the catalog, but no longer being taught. So, we resurrected this course. I was in charge of the curriculum.

The course is a 5 contact hour (4 credit) course that counts for both a lecture and a lab. From the beginning, I knew that I wanted to do something different. My first semester I used Physics by Inquiry. This is an extremely impressive curriculum. I group it along with texts like Matter and Interactions in that it inspired me to think about stuff in a new way.

Physics by Inquiry is a curriculum that sets up experiments for students and poses guided questions to help them build concepts. However, there was a problem with this text. First problem was that it was a little too open. It didn't give these particular students enough "pushing". The other problem was the math. Now, there is not much math in Physics by Inquiry, but it was enough. The students taking the course were for the most part (90%) elementary education majors. They are already scared of physics. Their math background is not strong either. You throw these two together and they just give up. I know they could do it, but there are mental barriers. Just so you know, I really like the way Physics by Inquiry ties some very important math concepts (like fractions) to physical ideas (like density). In the end, I would now use Physics by Inquiry for a course designed for middle school science teachers (maybe).

Around the time I was teaching this first Physics by Inquiry course, I came to discover Physics for Elementary Teachers (that was it's original name). I must have found out about it through the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) or something. So, what is different about PET?

• First, basically no math. In general, I want students to understand math at a deep level. However, if the math prevents them from learning anything, this is bad. For me, the most important goal of the course is to learn the nature of science.
• PET is much more structured than Physics by Inquiry. It is a good idea for students to learn how to function without too much structure, but if they can't even start what good is it? PET asks many more "intermediate" questions to help students develop the big ideas.
• Computers to collect data. Actually, this isn't a positive for students. I normally like courses that don't depend on computers. However, if you have a course that uses technology in a meaningful way, administrators think that is just cool.

Some more details about PET:

• The curriculum covers the following concepts: Energy, Forces, Magnets, Circuits, Light.
• PET is broken into activities. Each activity starts with an initial ideas discussion where students can share what they think before collecting data. I think it is important to realize that even though students' initial ideas do not agree with the evidence, they make sense in some way.
• After collecting evidence, students discuss the ideas they have built based on the evidence they collected. One of the objectives of the course is to make the evidence the authority in the class, not the textbook or the instructor. These students have a difficult time with this. They are so used to being evaluated based on what the teacher says is the correct answer rather than the answer that is supported by evidence.

So, why do I like teaching this class so much? Clearly, there are some issues that come up. Student expectations are a big one. But with all that, there is some real progression made by the students. This is a class where I feel it makes a difference. The students before the class are different (for the most part) than they are after the class. Sure there are some students that are never really engaged, but most of them are.