A Road Less Traveled: Industrial Physicist to High School Teacher

1. A Road Less Traveled:Industrial Physicist to High School Teacher This project was supported in part by NSF DUE- 0302098 and partially satisfied requirements for PHY690: Masters Project T – Triggering element of changed belief E – Essential component of changed belief V – Very strong support of changed belief S – Strong support of changed belief By Christopher Olszewski, Ph.D. Department of Physics, SUNY-Buffalo State College, 1300 Elmwood Ave, Buffalo NY 14222Frontier Central High School, 4432 Bayview Rd., Hamburg NY 14075<cjo496@yahoo.com> <http://physicsed.buffalostate.edu/pubs/PHY690/Olszewski2006AltCert> Table 2. The effect of program elements on my changed beliefs about good physics teaching. Table 1. My beliefs of good physics teaching and learning before and after the BSC alternative teacher certification program for high school physics teachers. PHY 622 Course Photo Summer 2005 Overview In this poster and paper, I describe changes to my ideas of good teaching as a result of my participation in an alternate teacher certification program for high school physics teachers at the State University of New York (SUNY) - Buffalo State College (BSC). My perspective is that of a career-changing industrial Ph.D. physicist with 20 years in the telecommunications industry. My initial ideas of good teaching were fairly traditional and based on my own experiences as a student, however my ideas of good teaching and learning changed radically due to my participation in the alternative certification program. Key elements of my new ideas of good physics teaching are to provide different kinds of knowledge about a topic to students (e.g., kinesthetic, visual, mathematical, etc.), to encourage students to verbalize their thinking, and to employ open-ended and unstructured laboratory activities. The heart of the BSC program is a summer academy suite of modeling courses and has additional components of an introduction to physics education research, educational courses, and field work. Significant changes to my conceptions can be traced to the themes of the program, particularly student-mode experiences, strong promotion of student discourse and white boarding, and related guided reflections on learning and teaching during the program’s summer academy courses. Other elements important to me included extensive exposure to pedagogical content knowledge and a marked student-centric emphasis. References Abd-El-Khalick, F. (2003). Alternative pathways to teaching: Quality teachers versus warm bodies in classrooms. Unpublished article available from the author. Arons, A. B. (1997). Teaching introductory physics (8th ed.). New York. John Wiley & Sons. Bruner, J. (1966). Toward a Theory of Instruction. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Etkina, E. (2005). 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