Education Week - August 3, 2016 - 12

Making the Transition From Other Subjects to Teaching Physics
teaching high school physics with just
a summer's worth of training is controversial. Some experts say physics teachers need an undergraduate
major or minor in the subject, at the
very least.
There are "a lot of naysayers out
there," said Kristin Kearns Jordan,
the executive director of the TortoraSillcox Family Foundation, which is
helping pay for Camden teachers to
attend the CTL training. "But the
tradeoff is scale," she said. Without
this program, in many physics classrooms, "you wouldn't have teachers."
Nearby Trenton public schools, for
instance, had just one high school
physics teacher before getting involved with the center two years ago.
Now, it has 21.
"The demand is very, very high for
physics teachers at the high school
level," said Rebecca Vieyra, the K-12
program manager for the American
Association of Physics Teachers.
About 40 percent of all public
schools teaching 9th through 12th
graders-and 31 percent of those in
New Jersey-did not have a physics
class in 2013-14, according to data
from the U.S. Department of Education's office for civil rights.
The CTL certification program was
created seven years ago by Robert
Goodman, a former physics teacher
and the 2006 New Jersey teacher
of the year. Through the program,
which is funded by the New Jersey
Education Association, participating districts, and some small outside
grants, teachers essentially spend
four weeks over the summer taking
the physics class they will be teaching. They're given a full curriculum,
complete with Smartboard slides for
every lesson, and ongoing professional
development and coaching throughout
the school year.

Quick-Moving Training
Since the program's inception,
about 200 teachers have received
their certification. The center trains
chemistry teachers as well, though
only about 40 educators have gone
through that program so far.
Across the country, higher-education institutions graduate a total of
only about 270 students from physics
teacher education programs per year,
according to a 2012 report from the
American Physical Society.
At the same time, there's good evidence the demand for physics classes
is growing: Between 2014 and 2015,
for example, the number of students
taking the Advanced Placement
physics exam doubled, according to
the College Board, which administers the test.
In early July, a half-dozen teachers sat in a classroom at Gateway
Regional High School here, learning
about uniform circular motion, or the
motion of an object traveling at constant speed in a circular path.
Alex Henderson, a biology teacher
in the Black Horse Pike Regional
school district in south New Jersey, whose school has asked him to
teach physics this fall, kicked off a
lesson for his classmates by swing-

ing a bucket of water above his head
in a windmill motion, like a softball
pitcher. The water, of course, stayed
in the bucket.
The lesson quickly moved from
direct instruction, using the Smartboard slides provided by CTL, into
problem-solving, which the teachers
did in groups. Eventually the teachers conducted a lab on centripetal
force, in which they swung various
stoppers on strings and worked to
determine their masses.
The 6½ hour CTL training days
are packed-the teachers go through
a unit every two days. In their own
classrooms, a unit will take about a
month to teach.
The pace of the training is clearly
challenging for some teachers, especially those whose expertise lies
outside the science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM, subjects. Rosa Sarita, an English-as-asecond-language teacher in Camden,
said she hadn't done similar science
since she was in college a decade ago.
"The math and science teachers ...
they're a step ahead of me," she said.
"I'm working more than the others."
Courtney Gray, a 6th grade teacher
who will be teaching physics in Camden next year, agreed that the summer sessions go through the content
quickly. "It's a lot to take in, especially not having a background in it,
but the [CTL] instructor is patient
with us," she said. "Having stronger
math people in the room-we help
each other. The program provides
everything for us."
The physics the CTL teachers are
learning differs in one major way
from the physics being taught in
most U.S. classrooms: It doesn't require any math higher than algebra.
The program promotes a physicsfirst method of teaching-meaning
that students learn physics as 9th
graders, then move on to chemistry

12 | EDUCATION WEEK | August 3, 2016 | www.edweek.org

Photos by Charles Mostoller for Education Week

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

and then biology. Most high schools
use the biology-chemistry-physics
sequence, meaning physics is paired
with more difficult math, and fewer
students end up taking it.

Tough Questions
Not everyone agrees that a crash
course in physics is enough to get
teachers ready for the kinds of tough
questions students will ask during
class.
To reach an "acceptable" minimum
level of preparation, a new physics
teacher needs an undergraduate
major or minor in the subject, according to a policy statement from
the AAPT, the physics teachers' association.
"A deep part of me wants to say
that physics teachers should have
some sense of what academic research looks like, what physics in
industry looks like," said Vieyra of
the AAPT. "If we're preparing students for college, teachers should understand what college-level physics
looks like."
In addition, teachers need to be
able to draw links between physics
and the other science subjects, she
said. That's particularly true for
teachers in states like New Jersey
that are using the Next Generation
Science Standards, which emphasize

"crosscutting concepts" that hold true
across the disciplines.
"Physics is not linear, it's not something you learn and teach chapter
by chapter," said Vieyra. "And the
NGSS are very interconnected, so
you have to have not only a holistic
understanding in physics but in science broadly."
However, there's some evidence
that the CTL training may be adequately preparing teachers. A recent study, conducted for CTL by
the outside research firm Hanover
Research, found that CTL teachers
are as likely to pass the Praxis certification exam for physics as non-CTL
teachers (though they're somewhat
less likely to pass it on the first try).
And some experts argue that
having pedagogical skill, including
the ability to motivate and engage
students, is more important than
having a background in the content. "When you're working with
people who really know the content,
as an administrator, it's a lot more
work to get them to improve pedagogically," said Michael Tofte, the
district supervisor for K-12 STEM
for the Trenton school system.
"But when you take people who
have pedagogical skills, you can
give them content in any area, and
they'll take students to succeed in
any subject."

FROM TOP: Teachers Jessica
Howell, left, Courtney Gray, and
Alex Henderson work on solving
physics problems during a
training session at Gateway
Regional High School in
Woodbury, N.J.
Calculations done by one of the
teachers involved in the teacher
training program show physics
concepts.

Along with changing when and
how physics is taught, CTL is also
working to change the demographics
of who is teaching it.
About half of the teachers who've
been trained in physics through CTL
are women and a third are black or
Hispanic. Nationally, about 37 percent of high school physics teachers
are women, according to a 2012-13
survey by the American Institute of
Physics. And less than 10 percent of
bachelor's degrees in the subject went
to black, Hispanic, and Native American students in 2013, the American
Physical Society reports.
There are still huge racial and gender disparities among the students
taking the Advanced Placement
physics exam in high school as well,
the College Board data also show.
Gray, who'll take over a physics
classroom next year in Camden,
where the majority of students are
black and Hispanic, said improving
racial and gender diversity in the
field was certainly a consideration
when she decided to take the CTL
training. "Working where we work,
it's always good to have teachers who
can relate to students," said Gray,
who is black. "It's better if they can
say, 'My teacher is not a white male
from the suburbs, but my teacher is
an African-American woman.' It lets
them know they have options."

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Education Week - August 3, 2016

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