I need your advice: your suggested readings for graduate courses for
physics teachers.
David Hestenes has said, "The teacher is the crucial factor in educational
reform... The training required to become an excellent teacher is vastly
underestimated by all who fail to recognize the complexity of learning and
knowing. There is no reason to count it as less than required for
professions, like medicine or scientific research - that is, about 10
years. From this perspective, the typical training of a few years for a
high school teacher is seen as pitifully inadequate. Surely, further
in-service training comparable to a medical or scientific apprenticeship
should be standard practice. But it is rare, and teachers are so burdened
with demands of the job that they have little opportunity to upgrade their
teaching skills.
Considering the requirements for quality teaching, institutional
mechanisms to promote lifelong professional development should be seen as
essential..."
David is practicing what he preaches. Arizona State University has a Master
of Natural Sciences degree program for inservice teachers. David wants to
revitalize it. He proposes to develop the following graduate courses for
high school physics teachers:
PHS 560: Matter and Light (3)
PHS 564: Light and Electron Optics (3)
PHS 580: Structure of Matter (3)
PHS 584: Electrical and Magnetic Properties of Matter (3)
PHS 570: Spacetime Physics (3)
Among other things, he needs readings at the level of Scientific American.
Do you have suggestions? I.e., if you were teaching one of these courses to
a group of bright, experienced high school physics teachers, 80% of whom
weren't physics majors, what readings/resources would you use?
If you can suggest good articles, please send them to me soon, as David
must prepare syllabi and lists of readings when he returns from the AAPT
Winter meeting (which is this week).
Cheers,
Jane
Jane Jackson, Dir., Modeling Workshop Project
Box 871504, Dept.of Physics, ASU, Tempe, AZ 85287
480-965-8438/fax:965-7331. http://modeling.la.asu.edu
Genius must transform the world, that the world may produce more genius.