This editorial contains an important announcement. It also contains ideas on which the two editor-authors agree. The fact that we agree, despite the difference in age, background, and much more, surely means that these ideas are correct.
No less a figure than Murray Gell-Mann1 pointed out that the prevailing method of teaching originated, before the invention of printing, in scriptoria in which students would make copies of manuscripts while listening to lectures. These methods had never worked, at least not for physics. Controversy and frustration about the teaching of physics were common; for over 100 years there were strongly differing opinions. The irony occurred to some physicists that opinions and faith were behind decisions being made by people whose professional lives were based on evidence-based truth. This, they felt, should not be. The difficulties in teaching or learning physics were a challenge with similarities to those of analyzing crystals or cosmology. Science, we are told (e.g., by Richard Feynman2), was invented to overcome the unreliability of guesses and opinions. Why not for teaching? Data had to be sought, and understood. And the early data were clear. As shown by McDermott and colleagues3,4 students of all types, both before and after instruction, struggled to understand the conceptual underpinnings of what was taught. As shown by Hake,5 how we taught our introductory physics courses strongly influenced how students learned the concepts. Research was needed.
By the late 1970s, physics education research had become a professional pursuit and acquired the acronym PER. It certainly was research, but it wasn't one of the older traditional branches of research. Where would it be published? There were journals for research in science teaching (in fact there is a Journal of Research in Science Teaching6), but physicists traditionally have thought of themselves as somewhat apart, not necessarily better, but certainly different. What seemed to be needed was a place to publish research specific to physics teaching.
The American Journal of Physics had a clear mission of supporting the teaching of physics, so on the one hand, there was a natural AJP/PER connection. But there was another hand: The mission of AJP very explicitly does not include research; it is not meant as a place to announce new discoveries. The two elements of its mission were in conflict regarding PER, but the situation required action, and as a temporary measure a special “PER” supplement of AJP was created in 1999, and a PER section replaced it shortly after. To be sure, there had been “physics education” all along in AJP, but in 2002 the creation of a Physics Education Research section, was the AJP welcome mat for research in teaching, pending the appearance of a fully appropriate alternative.
An alternative for PER publishing did appear. Starting in 2005, Physical Review (PR) had a “Special Topics” publication dedicated to Physics Education Research, an auxiliary publication sponsored jointly by the AAPT and the APS. In 2016, however, this was converted to Physical Review PER (with the full acronym PRPER). In the words of the PR announcement “Removing Special Topics also integrates these journals into the Physical Review family and better emphasizes their content.”7 A toe in the water had become a foot in the door.
With that change, with the appearance of a fully appropriate alternative site for PER publication, AJP will be discontinuing the Physics Education Research section, and will revert to its earlier tradition. Though it will be turning back, it will not be turning its back. Articles with direct applicability to teaching (classroom, lab, homework, or whatever) are—as they have always been—welcome. Such articles should be written in the style that is appropriate to a broad segment of the AJP readership, rather than to PER specialists. Those articles can be inspired by, and can refer to research discoveries, but the usual trappings of research, details of methodology, data, etc., should not themselves be in the article. Those trappings can be made supplementary material and can be made available through the AIP server. Reviewers will be directed to that supplementary material in order to answer any questions they might have about claims made in the article. To some extent, therefore, it will be possible for investigators to have their PER results vetted and published without article processing charges.
There is more to say about details but for now what is most important is this announcement: Physics Education Research articles, those articles that are suitable to the PER section, but not suitable as regular articles, will not be accepted one month after the appearance of this editorial, that is, after February 1, 2018. The extra month is to be as fair as possible to authors who are in the process of preparing a manuscript for the AJP PER section.
Fairness of course applies to PER manuscripts that have already been submitted. The PER section will continue until all PER manuscripts now in the publication pipeline have been piped through. Since reviewing is a careful, but often slow process this means that a PER section might pop up from time to time for another year or so.
What then?
We believe that it could be very useful for those who are not in the PER community to have news of what is going on in that community, especially of news that would be useful in teaching. A way of accomplishing this would be with a column format, something like “What's been happening in PER that you may want to know.” This column may be managed by a single columnist or by a set of alternating columnists. Candidates are now being stalked.
