A Model for Physics Education in Physics Departments: Improving the Teaching of Physics from Elementary through Graduate School

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The project is the fourth and fifth years of a five-year multi-faceted program conducted by the Physics Education Group in the Physics Department of the University of Washington. The program consists of a group of interrelated projects that focus on undergraduate course improvement, teacher preparation and enhancement, and university faculty development. The overall goals explicitly identified in the original proposal are: (1) to expand our knowledge of how students learn physics, (2) to increase student learning in the introductory university physics course, (3) to prepare (K-12) preservice and inservice teachers to teach science as a process of inquiry, and (4) to improve the teaching effectiveness of college and university faculty. In addition, a fifth activity has evolved into a major goal: (5) national dissemination of the work in research, curriculum development and instructional innovation. The project is working toward the first goal by continuing the investigation of student understanding in physics. It is working toward the second and third goals by using results from this ongoing research as a guide in developing instructional materials for introductory physics students and for preservice and inservice teachers. It is working toward the fourth goal by developing a model program for preparing physics graduate students and post-doctoral research associates for their teaching responsibilities as future faculty and by giving talks and conducting workshops for new and experienced faculty on physics education research and its use as a guide in the development and assessment of curriculum. It is working toward the fifth goal by publishing articles about the work and by conducting seminars and workshops for university faculty and precollege teachers to promote the use of Tutorials in Introductory Physics and Physics by Inquiry, two major curriculum development projects. Tutorials in Introductory Physics is intended to supplement the lectures and textbook of a stan dard introductory course. The tutorials are designed to engage students at a sufficiently deep intellectual level to develop the concepts and reasoning skills necessary to achieve a functional understanding of the material. Physics by Inquiry is a laboratory-based curriculum designed to be used by college and university faculty to prepare precollege teachers to teach physics and physical science as a process of inquiry.