Active Physics: an STS approach ready for your classroom
by John L. Roeder
Ever since Arthur Eisenkraft made his presentation about Active Physics at the 1994 National Science Teachers Association Convention in Anaheim (CA), which I reported in our Spring 1994 issue, I have been in love with teaching the program to all ninth graders at The Calhoun School in New York City. After that presentation I literally pestered Art for a copy of the program's teaching materials. From everything I had heard, it was an STS approach to teaching physics to students who otherwise wouldn't study physics, and I really wanted to try teaching it.
The following June I received a phone call from Art. "I'm sorry to be so late getting back to you," he said, "but AAPT [American Association of Physics Teachers, developer of the program] hasn't gotten it together to have the national field testers workshops this summer. But I tell you what I'll do," he continued. "I'll send you a single copy of each student book, and if you like it, you can come up here [to Fox Lane High School in Westchester County] for a one-day workshop."
I looked at the materials that Art sent. They were not uniform and showed a lot of cutting and pasting, with a lot of handwritten comments added, to boot. But it was love at first sight: five units on physics themes relevant to students' lives -- sports, transportation, health, the home, and making predictions. (A sixth unit -- on communications -- was still awaiting redevelopment.) I went up for that one-day workshop, and the next year (1994-1995) I pilot tested Active Physics to all of Calhoun's ninth graders, photocopying handouts that I had further cut and pasted and, in some cases (where the handwritten comments were too distracting) even retyped. I had a ball -- and my students did too (one of them called it "real" science).
The following summer I became a field tester of Active Physics (one of 55 nationwide) and also assisted in presenting the one-week training institute in Spokane (WA) to the other field testers. Now, two years later, I can finally confess my love of teaching Active Physics on these pages: the field testing is over, and materials for you to teach it in your classroom are ready to roll. Each of the five themed units consists of three related chapters, and each chapter begins with a challenge -- which becomes an alternative assessment which students must fulfill at the chapter's end. The chapter challenge also structures an Active Physics chapter like an STS module, as presented in our Fall 1992 issue. Between presenting and fulfilling the challenge comes a series of activities, each beginning with a "What Do You Think?" question designed to elicit students' preconceptions, which may or may not agree with the outcome of the following activity. In this way, Active Physics employs limited constructivism, and it lends itself to cooperative learning groups.
In keeping with the alternative assessment spirit of Active Physics, I have asked students for their final examination to review all the activities done during the year (which, in a sense, is really the purpose of a final exam!) and formulate a "Top Ten" list of the ten physics principles which they feel will be of greatest use to them in the long run. They need to describe the principle and defend why they chose it, and the results have often been interestingly revealing. The first year I taught the course, some students, who had encountered frustration in doing a voiceover to a sports video in which they explained the physics principles as well as the play-by-play, wrote "It's hard to be a sports announcer!" This past year, having been confronted with the requirement in the "Home" unit to limit their electric usage to 3 kWh/day (a reasonable amount for Africa), students realized that they would have to make very drastic cuts. On their final exam, many of them wrote that this caused them to realize that they really don't need many of the electric appliances they use.
Although I have found Active Physics most appropriate for ninth graders (using the "Physics First" approach, followed by chemistry and then biology), it can also be used as a senior elective or in a Scope, Sequence, and Coordination approach spanning more than one year of high school science education. How would you like to teach Active Physics? It is different from conventional physics teaching, and for that reason Eisenkraft (who is director of the project) suggests that the teachers having the easiest time of it are new teachers or a master teacher not steeped in traditional methods. But the publisher, It's About Time, 84 Business Park Drive, Armonk, NY 10504, TOLL FREE (888)-698-TIME, e-mail its time for@AOL.COM, is interested in helping teachers make the transition, by offering one-week institutes (like the institute for field testers in Spokane) or connecting new Active Physics teachers with mentors who have been involved with the field testing. I participated in presenting one such one-week institute to a group of teachers in Fairfax County (VA) this past July -- and, again, I had a ball.
A "starter pack" -- consisting of the first chapter of each of the five currently available units (the communications unit has been rewritten and is undergoing field testing in 1997-1998) -- became available on 15 August, and the remaining chapters will become available later during the 1997-1998 school year. Unlike the field test version and "starter pack," the final version will also be available in color.
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