A Community-Based Approach to Building the Capacity of Physics Teacher Preparation

具有科学素养的人口和劳动力对国家未来的健康至关重要，必须不断努力确保STEM领域的高中教育质量最高。拥有物理学学位并认为自己是物理专家的高中物理教师严重短缺。 这一问题在该国较贫穷的农村地区更为严重。该项目将通过建立一个由当地高中和社区大学的物理学生和教师组成的社区来解决德克萨斯州东北部农村的这个问题。该社区将为物理教育学位的学生提供支持。社区将专注于一个共同的活动;开发教材，以解决大多数学生发现困难的物理概念。这些材料将免费提供，并将有助于支持物理教育专业和高中物理教师，并导致物理教师的产量增加。该项目的目标是建立一个实践社区，由物理学和天文学系以及课程和教学系最近实施的一些与教师教育有关的项目的参与者组成。这些项目将包括将基于微积分的物理课程切换到工作室模式，并在这些课程中创建学习助理程序，为在职高中物理教师提供新的物理硕士课程，以及德克萨斯州教师驻留计划，该计划为学生提供津贴，让他们在获得教育硕士学位的同时，与导师一起进入STEM教室。驻校教师（TIR）将帮助项目团队从参与这些项目的学生和教师中建立社区，并将社区建立在为高中物理和大学物理入门课程创建教育材料的基础上，这些课程解决概念困难，提供公共教学资源，并提供机会让学员在课堂上进行行动研究，以衡量这些单元的学习成果。该项目还将继续进行改革的物理教师准备计划在得克萨斯州一个M-商务，让物理教师有效地完成该计划通过课程，使用最佳实践教学法，并降低招聘障碍。最终目标将是发展一个由物理教育研究提供信息的教师和学生社区，并获得免费教材，最终增加德克萨斯州持有物理学位的教师的供应。

A scientifically literate population and workforce is essential for the future health of the country, and continual efforts must be made to ensure high school education in STEM fields is of the highest quality. There is a dramatic shortage of high school physics teachers who have a degree in physics and count themselves as physics specialists. This problem is more acute in poorer and rural areas of the country. This project will address this issue in rural North-East Texas by building a community of physics students and teachers from local high schools, and community colleges. This community would provide support for students in the physics education degree. The community will focus on a shared activity; development of teaching materials to address physics concepts most students find difficult. These materials will be made freely available, and will help support both physics education majors and high school physics teachers, and lead to increased production of physics teachers. The goal of the project will be to create a community of practice from participants in a number of recently implemented projects related to teacher education in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. The projects will include the switch of calculus-based physics courses to studio mode and the creation of a learning assistant program in those classes, a new Master's program in Physics for in-service high school physics teachers, and the Texas Teacher Residency Program which provides stipends for students to be placed in STEM classrooms with mentor teachers while obtaining an education Masters. A Teacher-in-Residence (TIR) will help the project team build the community from students and teachers involved in these projects, and will base the community around the creation of educational materials for high school physics and college introductory physics courses which address areas of conceptual difficulty, provide communal teaching resources, and provide opportunities for participants to perform action research in their classrooms to measure the learning outcomes of those modules. This project will also continue the ongoing reformation the physics teacher preparation program at Texas A&M-Commerce to allow physics teachers to efficiently complete the program via courses that use best practice pedagogy, and to lower barriers to recruitment. The ultimate goal will be to develop a community of teachers and students informed by physics education research with access to free teaching materials, and ultimately increase the supply of physics-degree holding teachers in the state of Texas.