Summary: McDermott, et al.Summary of:
(1) Lillian C. McDermott, “Combined physics course for future elementary
and secondary school teachers,” pp. 129–137;(2) Lillian C. McDermott, “A perspective on teacher preparation in physics
and other sciences: The need for special science courses for teachers,”
pp. 138–146;(3) Lillian C. McDermott, Paula R. L. Heron, Peter S. Shaffer, and MacKenzie
R. Stetzer, “Improving the preparation of K-12 teachers through physics edu-
cation research,” pp. 147–151.This Summary presents an overview of three articles that
were published in the American Journal of Physics over a
span of more than 30 years. The fi rst section is devoted to the
fi rst article, which dates from 1974. It describes the devel-
opment of a combined physics course for prospective K-12
teachers at the University of Washington (UW). The second
section outlines the evolution of this course and provides the
context for the discussion of the other two articles in the third
section. Published in 1990 and 2006, respectively,^1 these iden-
tify some important characteristics that courses for teachers
should have and illustrate the kind of research in physics edu-
cation that has proved to be a useful guide for the preparation
and professional development of precollege teachers.I. DEVELOPMENT OF A COMBINED COURSE FOR
K-12 TEACHERS (1971-1974)Concerned by the 1957 success of Sputnik, physicists
and other scientists became engaged in the development of
precollege “hands-on” science curricula that were inquiry-
oriented. NSF supported these efforts. It was anticipated that
short workshops in which elementary school teachers could
work through a few activities would be suffi cient prepara-
tion because they could continue to learn with their students.^2
This expectation proved unrealistic. At the high school level,
Summer Institutes would prepare teachers to teach Physical
Science Study Committee [PSSC] Physics and The Project
Physics Course. It was assumed that they were well prepared
in the content and just needed to learn how to teach by inquiry.
Relatively few met this expectation.
In the late 1960s, the UW Physics Department instituted a
new course to prepare prospective elementary school teachers
to teach physical science by inquiry.^3 A related NSF summer
inservice program was begun in 1971. Both provided a learn-
ing environment in which the teachers could construct scien-
tifi c concepts from direct experience with the physical world
and develop the reasoning skills necessary for applying the
concepts to real objects and events.
There was also a need for a similar course in which pro-
spective high school teachers could learn (or relearn) physics
in a manner consistent with the inquiry-oriented approach in
PSSC Physics and Project Physics. We realized that the same
learning environment could also include students planning to
teach in middle or junior high school. It was obvious, how-
ever, that even with the addition of these students, the number
of prospective secondary school teachers would be too small
to make a compelling case for a new course. Therefore,
we invited students who had done well in the course forprospective elementary school teachers to enroll. We also
decided to include liberal arts students who had taken a year
of physics. University credit (but not the course number) was
the same for everyone in this “combined” course.
There is a strong tendency to teach as one has been taught
(not only what but how). Development of a sound conceptual
understanding and capability in scientifi c reasoning provide
a fi rmer foundation for effective teaching than the superfi cial
learning that often occurs during rapid coverage of many top-
ics. In the combined course, students gained direct experience
with physical phenomena, rather than by passively listening to
lectures and observing demonstrations. The course provided
an environment in which future teachers could develop the
capacity to implement inquiry-oriented curricula by working
through a substantial amount of content in a way that refl ects
this spirit. The perception that the one who learns most from
explanations by the teacher is the teacher, not the student,
set the tone for the type of guided inquiry that characterized
instruction. The daily opportunity for informal observations
helped us identify what teachers needed to know and be able
to do to teach science as a process of inquiry. We had many
in-depth discussions with the students. We soon realized that
most had learned physics by memorizing defi nitions and for-
mulas, rather than by going through the reasoning involved
in the construction and application of concepts. What they
seemed to need most was not to listen to lectures on special
relativity or black holes but to deepen their understanding of
basic concepts and to develop the ability to apply them to real
objects and events.
The curriculum developed for this course gradually evolved
into Physics by Inquiry.^4 The choice of topics was infl uenced
by their inclusion in the new precollege curricula and by what
could be encompassed within a few broad unifying themes.
The emphasis in the combined course was on depth rather
than breadth. We wanted students to recognize what it means
to understand a scientifi c concept. The students themselves
were expected to go through the process of constructing and
applying conceptual models for the topics typically taught in
introductory physics and physical science (e.g., mechanics,
electricity and magnetism, optics, waves, and observational
astronomy). For some topics, the prospective teachers were
expected to write a logically constructed report on how their
understanding had evolved. Sometimes they were asked to
describe how they could use their own experience as a guide
to lead students through inquiry to predict and explain some
simple physical phenomena. Whatever the topic under inves-
tigation, the question of how we know what we know was
raised. Teachers need to examine the nature of the subjectAPS-AJP-11-1001-Book.indb 24APS-AJP-11-1001-Book.indb 24 27/12/11 2:56 PM27/12/11 2:56 PM