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Re: Physics Education reform in 50s and 60s



There is a nice summary of "The Golden Age of Science Education,
1950-1977" at http://scied.gsu.edu/Hassard/mos/3.5c.html . A chart at
the end of this article gives the charter year for several NSF funded
science programs -- 1956 for PSSC, 1962 for Project Physics, and 1965
for IPS among them. IPS was being used at a private school where I first
started teaching in 1969, as was PSSC -- the latter which I taught.
Another physical science course of that period was ISCS, but that one
seems to have faded away.

For the schools that used these innovative courses, I think the
retooling in the classroom was considerable -- both conceptually and in
terms of the equipment being used, but also the emphasis on learning by
inquiry. People like Jerome Bruner and Arnold Arons were already setting
forth their ideas about science education. For one that had learned high
school physics in 1949-1950 using the text, _Modern Physics_ by Charles
E. Dull, PSSC was a very different game. In 1950, the idea was to cover
all the content of high school physics in time for the College Board
examinations. There were excellent demonstrations of physical phenomena,
but no labs with student involvement until after the College Boards were
over. I thought we had a good course, but PSSC was a different world --
student activities with rotating disk stroboscopes, slinkies, ripple
tanks, roller skate carts, centripetal force apparatus, Young's
experiment, Coulomb balance, estimation, scaling, etc. Except for power
supplies and apparatus for the more advanced experiments, the equipment
tended to be simple and inexpensive as Bernard pointed out. Some of it
was not too durable, as in the case of the mostly cardboard Coulomb
balances.

In 1973, towards the end of the "golden age," I attended an NSF Summer
Institute in Harvard Project Physics. There were an endless number of
demonstrations (in the _Teachers Guide_)of physical phenomena such as
circular standing waves on a wire (in analogy with De Broglie waves as
applied to the hydrogen atom) and also student experiments such as the
current balance in which there was ample opportunity to control
variables. The was an excellent unit on astronomy with many activities.
The "golden age" was over before I ever had the opportunity to try
Project Physics. I visited a couple of private schools that were using
it around 1974, but I heard little of it after that.

A good source of information about science education at all grade levels
is the volume _AAPT Pathways, Proceedings of the Fiftieth Anniversary
Symposium of the AAPT, History of the Association_ edited by Melba
Phillips and published by AAPT, November, 1981. In particular, the
article "Whither Do We Hurry Hence?" by Arnold Arons gives an overview
of the various innovative curricula of the preceding era. In particular,
Dr. Arons thought that the elementary curricula such as ESS, SCIS, and
MCA had more basis in classrom testing than materials written for the
intermediate/secondary level (p. 12). The AAPT volume also has articles
by Jon Miller, Clifford Swartz, F.A. Long, Edward M. Purcell, and Philip
Morrison.

Hugh Logan


John Clement wrote:
Probably, but IPS is technically physical science with an emphasis on
chemistry concepts. However it is still alive and well and it is marketed
by the lead author Uri Haber-Schaim. It is in 7th edition now. They now
have a new companion physics volume.
http://www.sci-ips.com/

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

Wasn't IPS also begun in that time frame?

joe

On Fri, 4 Jun 2004, John Clement
wrote:


I would say that this is a good place to start. Two curricula which =
came
out of the effort were PSSC physics and Harvard Project Physics. Whi=
le both
had some very good ideas, they were not based on research even approa=
ching
the current level in PER. Some of those materials have been directly
recycled into the current research based curricula.

In reality the retooling in the average classroom was probably very s=
mall
and business as usual has continued to this day.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX