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Re: [Phys-L] A role for physicists in STEM education reform. AJP Guest Editorial by David Hestenes




[Below is a 3rd excerpt from David Hestenes' AJP guest editorial, which you can download at the AMTA home page.
<http://modelinginstruction.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/HestenesD_archive_AJPIAS_vol_83_iss_2_101_1.pdf>
If you would like to start a Local Teacher Alliance, contact Colleen Megowan, the AMTA Executive Officer, at
AMTAexec@modelinginstruction.org -- Jane J]


For any university committed to serving the educational needs of its local community or region, the AMTA is prepared to guide development of a Local Teacher Alliance (LTA) of STEM teachers and link it to the national AMTA network for teacher enhancement and STEM education reform. All that is needed to start is sponsorship from the physics department. There are too many details about establishing a thriving LTA to discuss here; suffice it to say that the AMTA is already linked to high-functioning LTAs scattered across the nation. The good news is that these LTAs have been created and run by the teachers alone. The bad news is that in most cases, local universities have not learned of the great advantages in linking up with them. For starters, the LTA can provide a direct pipeline of students from high school to the STEM disciplines in college, and such links are prerequisites for successful STEM education reform.

The proposal that physicists must take the lead in organizing scientists and engineers to support STEM education reform may seem gratuitous, but the fact is that other disciplines are not nearly so well prepared to do it. Consider chemistry, for example. Though the AAPT has been supporting physics teachers for the better part of a century, the American Chemical Society (ACS) created the comparable American Association of Chemistry Teachers (AACT) only recently. Making up for lost ground, the ACS is also partnering with APS to create a ChemTEC to link up with PhysTEC, and the AACT is discussing collaboration with the AMTA. Already, some 400 chemistry teachers are taking Chemistry Modeling Workshops each year. Likewise, links of the physics department to other STEM disciplines provide a natural pathway to involve them in supporting LTAs for STEM teachers.

[Am. J. Phys. 83 (2), February 2015 http://aapt.org/ajp
copyright 2015 American Association of Physics Teachers]