July 13–17, 2013
59
Session BE: PER: Teacher Preparation
and Professional Development
Location: Pavilion West
Sponsor: AAPT
Date: Monday, July 15
Time: 4–5:20 p.m.
Presider: Hunter Close
BE01:
4-4:10 p.m. Comparison of In-Service and Preservice
Teachers
Contributed – Karen J. Matsler, UT Arlington, 502 Yates/SH 224, Arlington,
TX 76001;
The UTeach program is answering the urgent call for more qualified math
and science instructors across the nation, including physics teachers. The
program is a collaborative effort between university science and educa-
tion departments designed to produce teachers who are confident and
competent in STEM subject matter. A recent study revealed that between
2003-2008, 39% of all science teachers in Texas taught more than one sub-
ject and approximately half of those were certified in composite science but
ended up teaching physics upon graduation. Hence the need in the physics
community to engage in helping future teachers develop in both content
knowledge and knowledge of how students learn. We will report on a
study by UTeach programs at the University of Texas Austin and Arlington
to compare content understanding and confidence of UTeach preservice
physics majors and non-majors to in-service teachers who participated in
the national PTRA program between 2003 and 2008.
BE02:
4:10-4:20 p.m. Analysis of Preservice Teachers’
Reflections on Teaching
Contributed – Marianne Vanier, Rutgers University, 10 Seminary Place, New
Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183;
Marina Malysheva, Eugenia Etkina, Rutgers University
Preservice physics teachers at Rutgers University teach laboratories and
recitations in a reformed introductory physics course as part of their teach-
er preparation program. They reflect on their weekly teaching experiences
on a Google group page. We developed a coding scheme to analyze their
reflections and analyzed patterns in the reflections (total of 300 journal
entries). We focused on the dependence of the content and depth of reflec-
tion on the class material and the time of teaching (before or after student
teaching). In this talk we will present the patterns that emerged.
BE03:
4:20-4:30 p.m. Content Knowledge for Teaching Energy:
An Example from Middle School Physical Science
Contributed – Rachel E. Scherr, Seattle Pacific University, 3307 Third Ave. W,
Seattle, WA 98119;
Amy D. Robertson, Lane Seeley, Stamatis Vokos, Seattle Pacific University
“Content knowledge for teaching” is the specialized content knowledge
that teachers use in practice—the content knowledge that serves them
for tasks of teaching such as making sense of students’ ideas, anticipat-
ing conceptual challenges students will face, selecting instructional tasks,
and assessing student work. We examine a middle school physical science
teacher’s interactions with a group of students for evidence of content
knowledge for teaching energy (CKT-E). Our aim is not only to better
understand a single teacher’s practices but also to develop criteria for
observational assessment of CKT-E.
BE04:
4:30-4:40 p.m. Learner Understanding of Energy
Degradation*
Contributed – Abigail R. Daane, Seattle Pacific University, 3307 3rd Ave. W,
Seattle, WA 98119;
Stamatis Vokos, Rachel E. Scherr, Seattle Pacific University
Learners’ everyday ideas about energy often involve energy being “used
up” or “wasted.” In physics, the concept of energy degradation can connect
those ideas to the principle of energy conservation. Learners’ spontane-
ous discussions about aspects of energy degradation have motivated us to
introduce new learning goals into our K-12 teacher professional devel-
opment courses. One of our goals is for teachers to recognize that since
energy degradation is associated with the movement of some quantity to-
wards equilibrium, the identification of energy as degraded or free depends
on the choice of the objects involved. Teacher discussions of a particular
energy scenario (about a wind-powered heating system) led to produc-
tive conversations about the nature of energy degradation and its possible
dependence on the choice of what to include in the scenario.
*This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation
under Grant No. 0822342.
BE05:
4:40-4:50 p.m. Interactive Laboratory Experience –
Closing the Knowledge Gap
Contributed – Mark D. Greenman, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215;
During the summers of 2008 through 2012 five cohorts totaling 114 sec-
ondary school teachers responsible for teaching physics concepts enrolled
in a Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
funded summer institute hosted at area universities to enhance the teach-
ers’ physics content knowledge and to improve their use of research-based
best practices in teaching physics. The content knowledge gap between
male and female science teachers was reduced from a gap of 25% to 6%,
and the gap between physics majors teaching physics and other science
majors teaching physics was reduced from a gap of 31% to 8%. The average
paired fractional gain (measured using the FMCE) for these participants
was .68 with teachers in every comparison group showing strong gains (.57
to .74). Just as encouraging, these gains showed little decay over time.
BE06:
4:50-5 p.m. From “Cookbook” to Inquiry-based
Laboratory: Assessing Physics Teachers’ Professional
Development
Contributed – Zehorit Kapach, Weizmann Institute of Science, Department of
Science Teaching, 234 Herzl St., Rehovot, Israel 76100; Kapach@weizmann.
ac.il
Bat-Sheva Eylon, Bagno Esther, Weizmann Institute of Science
This study was carried out in a Continuing Professional Development
(CPD) program for high school physics teachers aiming to integrate
Inquiry-based Laboratory activities into their practice. How can one assess
teachers’ development in such a program? Discourse analysis of interviews
with teachers and audiotaped CPD meetings indicate that during the pro-
gram the criteria used by teachers to describe their views and experiences
changed. For example, in discussing views about the essence of inquiry
teaching: initial narrow literal interpretations (“inquiry is carrying out
an experiment”), then reflective descriptions about the role of inquiry in
meaningful learning and finally considering inquiry beyond the laboratory
(transfer). Similar changes were observed for various inquiry skills such as
communication: initial literal interpretation (“communication is prepar-
ing a ppt”); then reflective negotiation of meaning with peers; and finally
transfer to additional applications. We suggest that this kind of analysis is a
powerful tool for assessing teachers’ professional development
BE07:
5-5:10 p.m. Navigating Disequilibrium between
Pedagogy and Epistemology: Exploring Preservice
Teacher Tensions
Contributed – Richard P. Hechter, University of Manitoba, Faculty of Educa-
tion, CTL, Room 234, Education Building, Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada;
The purpose of this paper is to explore the tensions of preservice teachers
in terms of their pedagogical orientations towards integrating different
modes of representation, namely; visual, graphical, symbolic, and numeri-
cal, to enhance student learning against their self-reported epistemological
framework. Data were collected from preservice physics teachers (
n
=8)
Monday afternoon
