Brasil Final Report - Department of Physics - The Ohio State University

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SYMPOSIUM PANEL PRESENTATION – VII IACPE
Lillian C. McDermott
Department of Physics, Box 351560
University of Washington
Seattle Washington 98195 U.S.A.
lcmcd@phys.washington.edu
The need for improvement in the quality of physics education has been a dominant theme in
this and other Inter-American Conferences. The following comments are a distillation of reflections
on the conference and of personal experience.
In all of the countries represented at this conference, there has been widespread concern
about science education from elementary school through the university level. The preparation of
teachers to teach physics in the schools is recognized as an urgent problem. At many universities,
physicists have been dismayed over the steady decline in the number and quality of physics majors.
This conference has focused on physics teachers and physics majors, but there are also serious
issues related to other student populations that have impact beyond the physics community. In the
U.S., more than 95% of the students taking introductory physics are majoring in other sciences,
mathematics, and engineering. Therefore, the quality of instruction is of concern to other
departments and professional societies. Physics courses for non-science majors also deserve
attention. As citizens in a democratic society, these students may someday determine funding
priorities and affect the direction of scientific research.
In planning for the future, it is useful to reflect on past reform efforts. Recurring periods of
dissatisfaction with the state of physics teaching have motivated the development of new curricula.
The pattern is almost always the same. A new curriculum is developed and initially is adopted
enthusiastically. With the passage of time, enthusiasm wanes and disillusionment sets in.
Eventually, the situation degenerates sufficiently to give rise to another round of effort and the
beginning of another cycle. This pattern characterized the post-Sputnik era in elementary and
secondary science education in the U.S. and led to the beginning of the present cycle of reform,
which extends to the university level. (See solid lines in Fig. 1.)
It is not desirable that reform be a terminal process. We are never really where we would
like to be. However, neither is it fruitful to repeat the entire cycle. Instead, we would like to
intervene before disillusionment sets in and to try to bring about continuous incremental
improvement. (See dashed lines in Fig. 1.)
The question arises: Are we likely to be more effective in the future than in the past? The
discussions at this conference suggest several reasons for an optimistic response: awareness in the
physics teaching community of the problems in physics education, recognition that different types
of students may need different types of instruction, and recognition that teachers need better
preparation. Particularly significant has been the gradual acceptance by physics departments that it
is their responsibility to prepare teachers to teach physics in the schools and to prepare graduate
students to become effective instructors at the university level.
The strongest reason for optimism, however, is the steadily increasing number of faculty
who approach the teaching of physics as a science, not solely as an art. They have been conducting
systematic investigations to identify and address student difficulties. They are using the results
from this research as a guide for the development of curriculum that matches the needs of students.