Lillian C. McDermott
20
History
3/15/10
behavior of some common physical phenomena (
e.g.,
bulb brightness in electric circuits,
geometric images formed by apertures, and phases of the moon).
The topics have been
chosen to provide teachers with the experience needed to be able to teach science in the K-
12 grades by inquiry, rather than by lecture.
PbI
has also been successfully used with
liberal arts majors and underprepared students.
B.
Development and Refinement of
PbI
Development and refinement of
PbI
have taken place in our preservice courses and
NSF Summer Institutes for K-12 Inservice Teachers.
50
Since 1977 the Summer Institutes
have focused entirely on physics and physical science.
Teachers in elementary, middle,
and high school are admitted on a nationally competitive basis and may attend for three
years.
Those from local schools play an important role in our academic-year Continuation
Courses, where they help generate a sense of professional community.
About 20 participants in our Summer Institutes and preservice courses have
become peer instructors.
Lezlie DeWater (elementary school teacher) and Donna Messina
(biology teacher) have been the most experienced.
Lezlie (Seattle Pacific U.) was part of
our group for many years and contributed much to the development of
PbI.
Donna, who
is still with us, earned a Science Education Ph.D. for studies of Institute
participants in
their classrooms.
The purpose was to assess the impact of
PbI
and the Institutes.
51
We have encouraged teachers who have participated in our Summer Institutes and
preservice courses to do research on student learning in their classrooms. Several have
conducted research on the effectiveness of the curriculum that they have adapted from
PbI
.
52
The academic-year Continuation Courses provide an environment in which we can
support such “action research.”
We assist the teachers in the design of pretests and post-
tests and in the analysis and interpretation of data.
We use the telephone and email to
provide similar help to those not in the local area.
C.
A Perspective on Research
In 1988 Fred Reif invited me to an interdisciplinary conference at Berkeley, where
I met his graduate students and a number of faculty engaged in research on learning and
50
These have been funded by a series of NSF grants for which I have been the PI.
51
See III.a. in the Endnotes.
52
See III.b. in the Endnotes.
Lillian C. McDermott
21
History
3/15/10
teaching.
Preparing for my talk, I reflected on my perspective on research in physics
education. This introspection led to my writing “A View from Physics,” the first chapter
in
Toward a Scientific Practice of Science Education
.
53
I considered three perspectives:
those of a cognitive psychologist, science educator, and physics instructor.
I characterized my own perspective as “that of a physics instructor whose primary
motivation for research in physics education is to understand better what students find
difficult about physics and to use this information to help make instruction more
effective.”
As our group works toward this goal, we adhere to the procedures of
experimental physics to the extent possible.
We conduct systematic investigations, apply
our findings to the development of instructional strategies, assess the effectiveness
(usually by pre- and post-tests), document our methods so that they can be replicated, and
report results at meetings and in published papers.
We think of what we do as an
empirical applied science.
Our work requires a depth of understanding that is unlikely to
be found in the U.S. outside of a physics department.
Moreover, ready access to
university students while they are learning physics is not usually possible elsewhere.
D.
A Practical Guide for Curriculum Development
In 1987 Arnold Arons suggested to Priscilla Laws (Dickinson College) that she
consult with me about plans for
Workshop Physics,
a project on which she was
collaborating with Ron Thornton (Tufts U.).
54
Although we had never met, I invited
Priscilla to come to Seattle and stay with Mark and me.
Our conversations at UW and at
home were the beginning of a professional relationship and personal friendship that I
greatly value.
Soon afterwards David Sokoloff joined Priscilla and Ron and the three
began a long collaboration, during which they have developed innovative instructional
materials for use in different settings
(e.g.,
laboratory, lecture, and student assignments).
In 1992 Priscilla asked me to share my experience in curriculum development at
the New Mechanics Conference hosted by Ron at Tufts.
In reflecting on the development
of
Physics by Inquiry
, I identified several generalizations about learning by students and
teaching by instructors that had been inferred and validated through research and that
53
L.C. McDermott, “A View from Physics” in
Toward a Scientific Practice of Science Education
, edited
by M. Gardner, J.G. Greeno, A.H. Schoenfeld, A. diSessa, and E. Stage (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
Hillsdale, NJ, 1990), pp. 3-30.
The book was an outcome of the Berkeley Conference.
54
P. W. Laws,
Workshop Physics Activity Guide
(Wiley, New York, 1997).
See also Ref. 37.
