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

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majors and physics teachers as if there were no other possibilities for the physics major than going
to graduate school and eventually doing research in physics, and for the physics teacher no other
alternative than teaching classical physics in a traditional classroom.
In the same way that the secondary school physics curriculum must be updated and
reformulated, the undergraduate physics curriculum must be reexamined, modified, and made
flexible in order to offer more alternatives to its graduates. Of course, we must proceed with the
preparation, almost handcrafted, of the prospective physics researcher, the physicist properly said.
However, at the same time, we must also prepare the physics major that will work in industry,
technology, computer science, medicine, popularization of science, science education, as well as the
physicist that will work and do research in inter and multidisciplinary fields of knowledge. This
means that the undergraduate physics curriculum must provide for different profiles of graduates.
Those majoring in physics should not necessarily be future researchers nor physics teachers. They
must have more than these two alternatives.
In developing countries - and I suspect in developed countries as well - the job
possibilities for the traditional physicists are becoming more and more restricted. The solution
seems to be the search for new areas where physicists can work and be useful to society. They
certainly exist but they require new profiles of physicists.
On the other hand, independently of how many physicists profiles we might be able to
design, all of them must have a common core that will identify their background as being,
inequivocally, in physics. This common basis must be developed in Departments, Centers or
Institutes where physics is done, that is, where there is research, teaching, and extension in physics.
Specially in the case of teacher preparation it seems to me that whenever possible it must be
conducted in Universities and, within them, in units where they do physics. To experience a physics
environment seems to me an indispensable ingredient in the preparation of a physics teacher I am
strongly concerned about the possibility of preparing physics teachers in a school of higher
education alien, if not opposite, to physics.