On Teaching Physics

Figuring out what works: Discipline-based education research

When it becomes difficult to make sense of a situation, we need to become researchers ó to combine observation and analysis to figure it out. When the subject is our students, we become physics education researchers. At the heart of physics education research is a shift in emphasis in physics instruction from What are we teaching and how can we deliver it? to What are the students learning and how do we make sense of what they do? In order to make this shift, we need to listen to the students and find ways to learn what they are thinking. Only then do we begin to make sense of how students learn physics in a way that helps us improve our courses meaningfully.
What is required goes well beyond how even good teachers interact with their students. We both have observed classes and seen frequent cases where an instructor listened, but failed to recognize the student's real difficulty. For example, in a junior level electronics class a student asked a question about a comparison of currents at two points on a single branch of a relatively complicated circuit. Like many physics instructors, the professor in this class was a concerned and dedicated teacher. He listened carefully to the student and recognized that the student was confused. But instead of asking questions to determine why the student was confused, he proceeded to give a detailed description of how the entire complicated circuit worked. However, since the current was necessarily the same throughout the branch of the circuit, it was likely that the student's difficulty was a deep one  not addressed in the instructor's response ó that the current was "used up" en route. The student politely nodded (no better off than before) and the teacher moved on.

For the full article, go to: http://www.physics.umd.edu/perg/qm/qmcourse/NewModel/research/whatwork/index.htm