Re: [Phys-l] Conferences for HS Physics Teachers

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

A long term workshop such a Modeling will be much better than a short term
workshop, and a one or two day workshop is generally useless.  The research
on this has been around for a long time.  Teachers can generally change the
way they teach and get better results after a long term immersion in a new
technique, but even experienced teachers have no success with new methods
after a 2 day workshop.

However, even novice teachers could implement changes if they were given the
necessary materials.  Modeling does both, but their materials actually look
quite conventional in many respects, so they can be easily misused.  The
Minds on Physics text series gives you wonderful materials, but they have no
training program.  They do have voluminous teacher's guides which tell you
everything you wanted to know, but were afraid to ask.

McDermott et al at Washington often have summer training programs, and you
can't go wrong there.  For MS and 9th grade science the developers of IPS
hold some training that is probably very good.

The estimates are that it takes 160 hours of training to learn new effective
teaching techniques, and that it takes 8 years to become an expert or master
in any field.  4 week Modeling workshops are know to improve teaching, but
it is unknown if shorter 2 week workshops are as effective.

AAPT meetings are fun, and can be helpful to the experts, but the 1 day
workshops are probably fairly ineffective.  I don't know if anyone has ever
studied this, but other research points in this direction.

> Perhaps check the Modelling workshops from Arizona State. They are offered
> elsewhere but I cannot recall the details.
> Try this :  http://modeling.asu.edu/modeling-HS.html

John M. Clement
Houston, TX