Three reform-based approaches to high school physics
by John L. Roeder
Ever since the publication of the National Science Education Standards, talk and thoughts have turned to implementing them. The "Building a Presence for Science" program described elsewhere in this issue is designed to implement the Standards systemwide through a network of Key Leaders and Points of Contact. At the 13-16 August 1997 meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers at the University of Denver a session on "New Reforms in High School Physics Teaching" allowed three programs to show how they are directed to implementing the Standards in the teaching of high school physics.
The first of the presented projects to reform high school physics teaching was the Modeling method, developed by Professor David Hestenes at Arizona State University in association with Gregg Swackhamer and Larry Dukerich and tested in the doctoral dissertation (1987) of Malcolm Wells. In Phase I of this project (1995-1997) 50 teachers from 23 states were "engaged in consolidating a new full year high school physics curriculum," which they then tested in their own classrooms. Phases IIa (1997-1998) and IIb (1998-1999) will train 150 more teachers, each of which will participate in two successive four-week summer workshops and test the curriculum in between.
Having attended many single four-week summer institutes, I was curious about what required double four-week institutes ever since I received my first brochure advertising the Modeling Workshops. After attending the presentations by Dukerich and David Braunschweig, with whom I was trained to be a Physics Teaching Resource Agent in 1985, the answer became quite apparent. They presented the Modeling Cycle, which consists roughly of the following steps:
1. The teacher presents a system to be investigated or a problem to be solved.
2. With guidance from the teacher, students develop a plan for the investigation or a representation of the problem.
3. Student groups work together to perform the investigation or solve the problem.
4. Student groups present their results -- on white boards (one for each group).
5. The teacher leads the class to develop a consensus among the group results and to evaluate the models they used to get their results.
Sound familiar? Yes, if you're into reform-based physics teaching. No, if you've been giving the same lectures since you began teaching. As I saw it, the Modeling method is more a philosophy of physics teaching than a physics curriculum. Indeed, the people from the Modeling program with whom I spoke agreed, noting that their efforts had been focused mainly on the teaching of mechanics (which typically occupies the first semester of the year) while adopting other materials that are like-minded for teaching other topics, such as the CASTLE materials to teach electricity. As Dukerich presented it, students engaged in conventional problem solving see the physics problem as the unit of learning and automatically think the most-recently assigned problem uses the last-taught equation. In the Modeling method, students are asked first to decide on the appropriate representation and not to go "quantitative" right away -- it pressures students to "grab" for algebraic expressions. Solving mechanics problems in the Modeling method is done on the basis of five models: 1) free particle model (objects in linear, uniform motion subject to no net force), 2) constant force particle model (objects in linear or parabolic, uniformly accelerated motion subject to a constant net force), 3) central force particle model (objects in elliptical or circular motion subject to force with at least one centripetal component), 4) linear binding force particle model (objects in periodic oscillation subject to force proportional to its displacement), and 5) impulsive force particle model (objects in linear, uniform motion colliding with other objects).
Having accustomed myself to the equivalent of the Modeling Cycle in teaching the Active Physics program to all ninth graders at The Calhoun School the past three years (see separate story, this issue), I felt very comfortable with what I was seeing. I particularly like the categorization of mechanics problems among the five types of models (a good way to get students to ask themselves what are the conditions of a problem before they try to solve it) and the presentation of solutions by groups on white boards, and I plan to adopt these procedures in teaching my physics course to seniors this coming year.
But if you are a teacher steeped in traditional methods and want to move into reform-based teaching, you might well want to consider participating in the Phase IIb Modeling Workshops. Thanks to funding from the National Science Foundation, for each of the two four-week summer institutes, each participant receives a $1200 stipend, travel, housing, and meal allowance, and the possibility of earning up to four semester hours of graduate credit. If you are interested in applying, or just in learning more about the Modeling method, contact Dr. Jane Jackson, Modeling Workshop Project, Box 871504, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1504, (602)-965-8438, FAX: (602)-965-7331, e-mail jane.jackson@asu.edu, . And if you need to be persuaded of the value of the Modeling method, they can send you a chart showing how students of the Modeling method have a higher posttest/pretest ratio than students receiving traditional or other reform-based instruction on the Force Concept Inventory, which Hestenes, Wells, and Swackhamer developed (Phys. Teach., 30, 141-158 (1992)) and which has now become a standard indicator of student success in learning the concepts of force and motion.
Another way of implementing the National Science Education Standards, the Comprehensive Conceptual Curriculum for Physics (C3P for short) is more a curriculum as well as an approach to teaching high school physics. Its mission is "to produce a comprehensive conceptually-based physics curriculum for all high schools, usable by all teachers, and effective with all students." Starting with successful aspects of physics teaching in the past as its basis, with an emphasis on the Learning Cycle (engagement, exploration, explanation, elaboration, and evaluation), the C3P Project has assembled its curriculum on a CD-ROM. The CD-ROM includes materials from such time-tested programs as PRISMS, CASTLE, Operation Physics, Cinema Classics, Tools for Scientific Thinking, and The Mechanical Universe High School Adaptation and also contains learner outcomes, lesson plans, a historical timeline, enhanced learning cycle activities for explorations, concept development, applications, and alternate assessments. These materials are structured into eight C3P units: Matter, Space, and Time, Habits of the Mind (from Project 2061), Kinematics, Forces and Newton's Laws, Energy and Conservation, Waves, Electricity and Magnetism, and Modern Physics. Outlines of the eight units can be obtained from the C3P website: http://phys.udallas.edu.
The C3P Project was begun in 1993 with a National Science Foundation grant by Professor Richard Olenick at the University of Dallas, Professor Carl Rotter of West Virginia University, and an Overview committee composed primarily of researchers in physics education and an Academic Council of fifteen master high school physics teachers. They have now trained a cadre of 75 Mentors from 39 states at a three-week workshop, and these Mentors will spend the concluding year (1997-1998) of the Project giving three-week Mentor workshops, through which other physics teachers can learn about the C3P Project and obtain the CD-ROM (for $150). You can locate the Mentor nearest you by visiting the C3P website.
Presented as the newest of the three reform-based methods for teaching high school physics, Constructing Physics Understanding in a Computer Supported Learning Environment (CPU for short) is still regarded as a "work in progress." Developed by one of America's leading cognitive researchers in physics education, Fred Goldberg of San Diego State University, and such noted physics teachers as Pat Heller, Jim Minstrell, Paul and Jennifer Bond Hickman, and Robert Morse, CPU aims to foster changes in the way teachers teach and students learn -- in which students, individually and in groups, form a learning community without having to rely on what they read in texts. Using a modification of the Learning Cycle, CPU pedagogy is based on a sequence of Eliciting Relevant Issues, Developing Class Consensus, and Applying for Enhanced Understanding. The "long title" of CPU indicates that it has a software component, and interactive physics software is available for students to model and test their ideas in Static Electricity and Magnetism, Current Electricity, and Light and Color -- and a unit on the nature of science called "Underpinnings" as well. Additional units are envisioned in Force and Motion, Wave Motion, and the Small Particle Model of Matter. The CPU Project is currently being pilot tested with 2000 students in Florida and 1600 in Delaware. In her presentation of the CPU Project, Mary Anne Wells of Christiana High School (Newark, DE) contrasted CPU and traditional teaching with excerpts from the "less emphasis on/more emphasis on" tables from the Teaching and Content Standards on pages 52 and 113 of the National Science Education Standards. The URL for the CPU website is http://cpuproject.sdsu.edu/cpu/.
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