Physics education research, electronic materials, and the musings of Christopher Moore, Ph.D.

Here is an interesting story about a group of teachers floating in freefall during the “Weightless Flights of Discovery” program, sponsored by the aerospace company Northrop Grumman in cooperation with Zero Gravity Corp. On one level, the exercise gives educators a chance to demonstrate the laws of physics in an environment like nothing on Earth: [...]

Physicists properly join today’s arguments involving the teaching of Darwinian evolution. There is, however, a social issue even closer to the responsibility of physicists: quantum physics is increasingly invoked to promote pseudoscience. Such pseudoscience promotions often start correctly stating some intriguing implications of quantum mechanics, move on to legitimate hyperbole, and then go off into [...]

Robert Tai, a science education assistant professor at the University of Virginia recently published a study that claims students subjected to block scheduling in high-school science classes performed worse in college-level science. Tai along with high-school biology teacher Kirsten Dexter looked at a national sample of 8,000 introductory college science students from 31 states, many [...]

An old post got an interesting comment yesterday, which got me thinking: was I well compensated as a high-school teacher? The commenter, Doinkicarus, has a few things to say about Michigan’s new tougher graduation requirements that I disagree with. He’s against them. I’m trying to change the culture of education, so I like more required [...]

Michigan is warning its teacher colleges that they better produce better teachers or else. The Detroit News has the story: State officials want to crack down on state colleges to ensure they are preparing future teachers to meet the state and nation’s rising education standards. Michael Flanagan, the state superintendent of public instruction, now plans [...]

Edward Morely advocated the end of “Physics for Poets” yesterday at insidehighered.com. Or did he? Although I believe he is not advocating the end to physics classes for non-majors, I think he does take issue with the conventional wisdom of how such classes should be taught. Conventional wisdom … has it that there are three [...]

President Clinton’s former chief of staff and current president of the University of North Carolina, Erskine Bowles, wants his school to pump out more physics teachers. Here’s why from his own mouth: At a time when the world is clamoring for science and engineering talent, about two-thirds of the students in U.S. high schools studying [...]