Science Teacher Initiative Launched

In an effort to create more and better-prepared K-12 science teachers from the ranks of college physics and physical science students, a partnership of physics organizations, backed by federal grants totaling more than $6 million, has established the Physics Teacher Education Coalition, or PhysTEC.

"We want to create a new generation of elementary and secondary science teachers," said Fred Stein, one of PhysTEC's principal investigators and the director of education and outreach for the American Physical Society. "We need teachers who know physics and who love it."

The program, developed by APS, the American Institute of Physics (AIP), and the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT), received a five-year, $5.76 million grant from NSF in August, and a $498 000 grant in September from the US Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE). Most of the funding will be awarded to six colleges and universities that have agreed to improve their science preparation of future teachers.

The schools are Ball State University in Indiana, Oregon State University, the University of Arizona, Western Michigan University, Xavier University of Louisiana, and the University of Arkansas. One of the goals of PhysTEC, Stein said, is to encourage collaboration between the faculty in the physics and education departments to produce a coherent program.

PhysTEC began as an idea that grew out of a meeting in early 1999 of APS, AIP, and AAPT staff members concerned about education, Stein said. "Their governing boards passed a joint statement urging the physics community to take a more active role in improving the pre-service education of physics and other science teachers." The statement reflected the recommendations in several studies, including recent reports by the National Research Council and the National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century, for programs to better prepare future science teachers.

After the physics organizations issued their joint statement, APS Executive Officer Judy Franz thought, "you can put that on your Web site and just forget about it, or you can do something." She knew a program to improve science teacher education would have to be a collaborative effort, she said, and getting education and physics faculty members to work together would be critically important. "Physics departments and education departments have traditionally had trouble working together and, as a result, physics courses are not designed for teachers and education courses for science teachers are taken out of context."

Franz was in the process of hiring a new education and outreach director, and Stein was one of the candidates. "He had run a statewide collaborative program on teacher education through Colorado State University, so he had the right kind of experience to develop this program." Franz hired Stein, and a management team including Jack Hehn of AIP and John Layman and Warren Hein of AAPT was formed.

PhysTEC's goal, Stein said, is to create "better-prepared science teachers who are committed to student-centered, inquiry-based, hands-on approaches to teaching from the moment they hit the classroom. Teachers tend to teach the way they were taught, and we need to break that cycle and create a new model."

"Our vision is that, as a result of this program, all students will choose to take at least one physics course before they graduate from high school," Stein said.