Powerful Ideas in Physical Science, an AAPT workshop

[Jane Jackson <jane.jackson@ASU.EDU>]

Colleagues,
While browsing the AAPT web site today (specifically, on the Summer meeting
at Boise), I noticed that few people have registered for the workshop on
POWERFUL IDEAS IN PHYSICAL SCIENCE (PIPS), led by Dewey Dykstra on Sunday,
Aug. 3.

That's a shame, because I've heard many good things about PIPS. And Dewey's
students show high gains in understanding, as measured by Thornton's &
Sokolow's FMCE.

The note below was posted on PHYSLRNR listserv. Prof. John Earnshaw is near
retirement; I heard him speak at the AAPT meeting in Guelph Canada, and I
was impressed with his willingess to learn, his enthusiasm, and dedication.
He used to be a traditionalist, and he had never taught pre-service
teachers before. He's had a remarkable shift in teaching style, and he
truly loves his work now.

If you're attending the AAPT meeting, and if you teach preservice teachers
(or nonscience majors), consider the PIPS workshop.

cheers,
Jane Jackson
        -----------------------
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 16:42:16 -0400
From: John Earnshaw <jearnshaw@trentu.ca>

John Clement wrote:
> ....
> I think we all recognize that the big battle is to get the instructor to
> think differently about what the students should learn and how they should
> learn it.  Without changing the instructors, changing the books will have
> minimal impact.
> .......

I have followed the recent dialogue about "texts based on PER" and "teaching
based on PER" with considerable interest.  I agree with those who point out
that BOTH are essential to achieve large learning gains in a course.  I am one
of those "old-timers" who was converted (like Richard Hake, see ref 8 at
<http://www.physics.indiana.edu/~hake/> ) after thinking that I delivered great
lectures, created wonderful fill-in-the blank lab exercises, and assigned
insightful, application-based problems to many hundreds of students for over 25
years.  I even received high evaluations in my former days, but I am now
convinced that much of it was unproductive, inefficient, and ego-boosting.  My
goal in those days was to turn my students into my clones, and I failed in all
but a tiny minority of cases.

My conversion came by accident when I acquired the Powerful Ideas in Physical
Science curriculum from the AAPT (PIPS) to use in a large course to which I was
assigned called "Physical Science for Future Elementary Teachers".  The 40-page
general introduction to that PIPS material called "Constructing Your Course"
initially seemed outrageous me, but eventually those 40 pages changed my life.
The additional detailed pages on "how to teach it" that come with each of the
published PIPS units coached me to switch my role from "teacher" to
"facilitator and motivator" in ways I had previously thought impossible.  Since
then I have stopped lecturing in all my courses (including upper year
main-stream physics courses), and switched the situation from "they learn from
me and the text" to "they teach themselves while investigating in groups under
my guidance".

I have now used these PER-based teaching techniques for three years (5
sessions) with about 300 undergraduates, and I'll never go back to the old
ways.  I thank the PIPS authors for guiding my teaching in new directions,
warning me that these ways are often scoffed at by physics colleagues, and for
providing me with worksheets (i.e. texts) that have turned disinterested,
worried, mostly female education students into proud, fascinated, engaged and
successful students of physics.  How many of you have had non-majors say at the
end of a physics course; "I wish there was another physics course like this
one" or "this was the best course I've ever taken"?   Anyone contemplating
writing a new physics text would find that a read of those 40 pages of general
introduction from any PIPS module would be time well spent, although you too
might initially think them to be outrageous.  It does work.

On a slightly different point, publishers might be really put off by another
aspect of PIPS.  It is an "open publication" with its copyright held by a
non-profit organization, the AAPT.  I am invited (after purchasing a site
licence for my institution for a few $hundreds) to modify, edit, sell,
photocopy, etc. any of the student materials within my own institution.  My
students don't purchase any additional texts, and the course-pack cost is far
lower than a typical publisher's text.  For those of us who care about the cost
of education, this is an added benefit for our students.

John Earnshaw
Physics Department
Trent University
Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
        -----------------------------------

Jane Jackson, Co-Director, Modeling Instruction Program
Box 871504, Dept.of Physics & Astronomy,ASU,Tempe,AZ 85287
480-965-8438/fax:965-7331  <http://modeling.asu.edu>
   We must manage our forests -- and our planet.