Educating
Scientifically: Advances in
Physics
Education Research
It is now
fairly well documented that traditionally taught, large-scale introductory
physics courses fail to teach our students the basics. In fact, often
these same courses have been found to teach students things we do not want.
Building on a tradition of research in physics, the physics education research
community has been researching the effects of educational practice and reforms
at the undergraduate level for many decades. From these efforts and those
within the fields of education, cognitive science, and psychology we have
learned a great deal about student learning and environments that support
learning for an increasingly diverse population of students in the physics
classroom. This talk will introduce some of the ideas from physics education
research, discuss a variety of effective classroom practices / surrounding
educational structures, and begin to examine why these do (and do not)
work. I will present both a survey of physics education research and some
of the exciting theoretical and experimental developments emerging from the