Abstract
Research on the learning and teaching of science is an important field for scholarly inquiry by faculty in science departments. Such research has proved to be an efficient means for improving the effectiveness of instruction in physics. A basic topic in introductory physics is used to illustrate how discipline-based education research has helped identify certain conceptual and reasoning difficulties that are common among university students and pre-university teachers. The results have been used to guide the design of instruction that has brought about a significant improvement in learning. The type of research illustrated requires a deep knowledge of physics and ready accessibility to students as they study that subject. Both of these conditions are usually present only in physics departments, not in departments in which the primary focus is on educational theory and methodology. Although the context of this paper is physics, analogies can readily be made to other sciences.
Highlights
The Physics Education Group at the University of Washington (UW) has demonstrated that the learning and teaching of physics can be investigated in a scientifically rigorous manner
Our emphasis has been on university students and on elementary and secondary school teachers, but we have evidence that this approach is useful at other levels of education
For more than 35 years, we have been teaching special courses in physics for preservice elementary and secondary school teachers during the academic year and conducting intensive six‐week Summer Institutes for inservice teachers. (These have been supported by the U.S National Science Foundation through a series of competitive grants.) We offer a special weekly course during the entire academic year for all teachers who have participated in our Summer Institutes or in our academic‐year courses for teachers
Summary
The Physics Education Group at the University of Washington (UW) has demonstrated that the learning and teaching of physics can be investigated in a scientifically rigorous manner. We have drawn on the results to guide the development of two sets of research‐based curricula, which are widely distributed. Both are research‐validated, in that they have led to documented improvement in student learning. Our experience suggests that discipline‐based education research can be an efficient means for achieving cumulative improvement in the effectiveness of instruction. Many university science faculty view teaching solely as an art and maintain that it can never be a science. They seem to regard discipline‐based education research only as a means for instructors to improve their own lectures. In the discussion that follows, the examples used as illustrations are from a basic topic in physics that most science faculty have studied at some time during their secondary or university education
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