Welcome to a celebration of the art, craft, and science of physics teaching.
On the outside cover, we present a physics teacher pondering the balance of art and science in teaching. How do you see that balance playing out? Do you see yourself as a performer who guides your troupe to new dramatic heights of scientific exploration? Or rather as a strict empiricist, who uses data to discern the best way for students to construct their own knowledge? Or perhaps you fall somewhere between the holistic aesthete and the pure reductionist, perhaps identifying more happily with the craftsperson, the artisan, or the practitioner?
What are the atoms of physics teaching? What are the conservation laws, if any? What are the mediating particles, the photons and gluons? What are the oils, the water colors, the canvas, the costumes, the make-up, the stage? Who are the great artists of physics teaching, the great experimentalists? What might we compare in physics teaching to rhythm, perspective, melody, composition, scales, texture, harmony, color, timbre, symmetry, dissonance, flow, resolution, contrast, and dynamics?
How might we use the rhetoric, epistemology, and ethnography of classic art, music, and culture to provide metaphors of what a teacher learns over a lifetime of teaching? The cover art suggests that the current state of physics teaching is still more art than science—does that match your experience?
Inside this issue we present the first subset of a collection of articles focusing on “The Art, Craft, and Science of Physics Teaching”—there were so many submissions to this themed collection that they could not be contained in a single issue of TPT, so we'll be celebrating additionally with occasional featured articles throughout this academic year. These manuscripts were submitted in response to a specific call for papers, and reviewed under the criteria established by that call. The original request included topics such as balancing art and science in classroom strategy; using art and culture in the physics classroom; measuring student and/or teacher performance as an empirical science; and examining whether, and to what extent, teachers adopt evidence-based pedagogies. The call also sought to inspire “tales-from-the-trenches” submissions; novel course descriptions that cross cultural divides; philosophical musings from highly effective and/or exceptionally experienced teachers; or testimonials regarding exceptional practices of favorite teachers.
And the response was overwhelming, not just in numbers, but in quality and gravitas! So, we'll be publishing papers on the theme throughout the 2015–2016 academic year. Each article will be identified with an “Art and Science” logo, and the entire collection will, of course, be available through the AAPT/TPT website, once published.
These manuscripts were critiqued by several panels of peers, also experts in the field, many of whom were new to the TPT review process. Subsequently the manuscripts were revised, sometimes more than once, in response to these critiques, and eventually a portion were accepted into the collection. We freely acknowledge that this collection is not the final word on the subject, and that there are likely many more excellent papers to be written on the subject by eminent physics teachers in our community. We hope to see some of those in the future.
Within these pages, and throughout the collection, you'll find teachers creating a performance with student actors, purveying delight among students, engaging students in art and music, and measuring student responses. There are personal essays regarding lessons learned over years of teaching, as well as descriptions of programs developed over many years of research, adaptation, and implementation—programs that have fundamentally changed and extended physics teaching as a field of study. There are teachers who look for ways to make the learning environment relevant, and even exciting, to their students. This often takes the form of balancing interesting topics from the liberal arts with science content. Sometimes, in contrast, models developed in the arts can be used to describe and shape teaching methods and philosophies. Often history can provide interesting contexts for student engagement. Breathtaking developments in technology and communication have occasionally inspired new directions in evolving physics curricula. Physics teachers are comfortable with and quick to adapt technologies in their instruction, often among the first educators to leverage these tools, as some of the articles in this collection document.
Teaching is important, but what of learning? Teaching and learning are human endeavors and deeply depend on relationships that teachers and students develop with each other. Realizing that teaching and learning should be closely correlated, we are going to focus our attention in this TPT collection on the teaching side of the equation, but expert teaching constantly recognizes that learning is the ultimate outcome.
This collection reflects that the best teachers are accomplished experiential learners themselves and are able to analyze their own behavior meta-cognitively and estimate their own effectiveness with respect to pedagogical content knowledge provided and student outcomes and behavior. Teachers continually learn about themselves, their craft, and the content; and they strive to mature and improve their own teaching practices through professional development experiences. To quote a former president of AAPT, Karen Johnston: “You are always becoming a teacher.”
This teaching maturation process usually includes developing a fundamental philosophy about teaching and learning, whether or not this philosophy is well articulated or published. At AAPT meetings, participants engage in the “teaching” conversation for hours on end and often over many years.
Professional development for physics teachers can take many forms. Teachers learn by carefully observing their students and from observing other teachers. They learn from activities like workshops and summer programs provided by professional and learned societies, like AAPT, and from the many interactions with individuals in their own social and academic circles. Many teachers identify mentors that have been seminal to their careers, and many teachers go on to be excellent mentors themselves.
One might argue, as the cover suggests, that the art of physics teaching has more heft than the science of physics teaching, what with heavyweights like Socrates and Galileo providing their insights regarding how to ask questions and present dialogues. Recently though, through the efforts of many pioneers, the Physics Education Research (PER) movement has really begun to bulk up what can be called the science of physics teaching—so much so that it might be considered one of the most important scientific developments in the entire physics community in the last half of the 20th century. Publications focused on the science of physics teaching have experienced significant growth in the last 40 years. Once considered anathema in physics departments, teaching, and PER particularly, have moved from ignored, to tolerated, to allowed, and now even encouraged, at least in some circles. PER has provided significant leadership in the development of Discipline-Based Education Research (DBER), as evidenced by recent publications of the National Academy of Science.1 As this century progresses, we look forward to seeing more results from PER disseminated to practitioners, stimulating more use of evidence-based practices for improving teaching and learning throughout the community.
It is indeed a privilege to be a physicist, as Victor Weisskopf's book proclaims. Part of this privileged state is the breadth of organizational, governmental, and association support that physics teachers receive regularly. All of the initiatives and reforms described in the collection were generously supported by the National Science Foundation, local and state institutional funds, and other agencies, as well as, within the budget and tacit or recognized support of the local school or college department, not to mention groups like the AAPT. With this privilege comes a responsibility to continually improve our own teaching, to continually observe and demonstrate increases in student performance, and to contribute to the growth and development of colleagues in the physics teaching community.
And a responsibility to express gratitude:
Thank your favorite teacher, today!
