Active Physics Teacher Community

在美国选修物理的学生数量正在增加，因为州政府的要求以及物理优先和全美物理运动的成功鼓励学校在九年级教授物理。采取这些举措的学校必须从教授学业成绩优异的11年级和12年级学生的模式转变为适用于所有9年级学生的模式。人口结构的变化和多样性的增加对物理教师提出了挑战。为了应对这一挑战，传统的专业发展模式被一个在线专业发展平台--活动物理教师社区--扩大，该平台为教师制定活动物理课程的目标单元提供及时支持。通过向教师提供与他们在课堂上教授的课程相关的正式指导，帮助教师备课。此外，一个由主持人主持的论坛允许教师与使用相同课程和相同课程的其他教师分享课堂经验、成功经验和问题，并将他们的经验与使用这些课程的其他教师进行比较。因此，教师在学习内容和以其他人理解的方式表述和表述学科方面都得到了支持。这项研究将在大城市中心的教师中进行，使用四个活动物理单元。还对活性化学的一个单元进行了测试，以确定专业发展模式的普适性。此外，编写的材料和学到的经验教训被存档在活跃的物理教师资源中心，这是一个由出版商托管的基于网络的互动储存库。

The number of students taking physics in the US is increasing because state requirements and the success of the Physics First and Physics for All Americans movements encourages schools to teach physics in the ninth grade. Schools that adopt these initiatives must move from a model of teaching academically high performing 11th and 12th grade students to a model that works for all 9th grade students. The demographic changes and the increased diversity present challenges to physics teachers. To address this challenge, the traditional professional development model is augmented by an online professional development platform - the Active Physics Teacher Community - that provides just-in-time support for teachers as they are enacting targeted units of the Active Physics curriculum. Teachers are helped in preparing lessons by providing them with formal instruction related to the lessons they are teaching in the classroom. In addition, a moderated forum allows teachers to share classroom experiences, successes and questions with other teachers using the same lessons and the same curriculum and to compare their experiences with other teachers who have used the lessons. Thus teachers are supported both in learning the content and also in representing and formulating the subject in a way to make it comprehensible to others. The study will be done with teachers in large urban centers using four units of Active Physics. One unit of Active Chemistry is also tested to determine the generalizability of the professional development model. In addition, the materials developed and lessons learned are archived in the Active Physics Teachers' Resource Center, a web-based interactive repository to be hosted by the publisher.