Physics

By taking a responsive approach to the design and enactment of teacher professional development (PD), PD instruction can be tailored to teachers' needs, interests, and concerns. This is of considerable importance in the high school physics teacher PD space, wherein teacher needs turn out to be particularly complex and diverse due to differences in teacher preparation within the discipline. More generally, understanding the degree to which PD programs are responsive to their teachers' needs can support increased responsiveness. To this end, having a validated survey can assist in measuring the criteria for this responsiveness. This study presents the initial development of a responsive professional development (RPD) survey based on interviews with 13 high school physics teachers.

Although most teachers recognize the importance of taking investigative, open-ended approaches to students’ learning experiences, implementing them in high school classes can be challenging for teachers. In this work, we analyzed data from multiple sources from a teaching Community of Practice (CoP) to investigate (a) barriers to taking an open-ended approach in teaching labs in physics classes, (b) shifts in teachers’ beliefs about taking an open-ended approach during their engagement in a physics teaching CoP in a partnership program, and (c) a case study of one teacher whose shifts in perceptions about taking an open-ended approach in teaching labs led to her successful implementation in her class.

Gutiérrez’s equity framework, derived from mathematics education research, defines equity in terms of four dimensions: access, achievement, identity, and power. Access and achievement yield outcomes that reify the status quo while identity and power transform schooling to redistribute power. We use Gutiérrez’s equity framework to study discourse about equity from 36 high school physics teachers who participated in an equity-focused professional development workshop.

Physics has the reputation of being purely about nature, not about people or culture. Physics concepts such as time, space, and mass are often considered to be independent of sociopolitical concepts such as democracy and capitalism. However, physics concepts are not “out there” in the universe, free of cultural values: rather, they are created and sustained by people in specific times and places, for the purpose of addressing particular social needs and empowering particular people.

These high-quality, NGSS-aligned science lesson plans are built on phenomena meaningful to rural students. They include plans for middle school science, as well as high school biology, Earth science, chemistry, and physics.

This resource library offers curricular materials for teaching energy and equity in high school physics.

This resource library offers curricular materials for teaching energy and equity in high school physics.