Reformed Physics Teaching
An Inquiry-Based, Cooperative Group Approach to Teaching Physics by Chris Meyer
Stop Teaching!
and Help Your Students Learn
Hello and welcome to my website! For four years I have been running a reformed physics classroom that is designed around cooperative group work using guided-inquiry investigations. The traditional lecture has completely disappeared! This website is desgined to help you learn about this method of teaching and to provide you with the materials that you might need to start teaching this way yourself.
OISE Candidate Teachers
NPR: Physicists Seek To Lose The Lecture As Teaching Tool
January 1, 2012
The lecture is one of the oldest forms of education there is.
"Before printing someone would read the books to everybody who would copy them down," says Joe Redish, a physics professor at the University of Maryland.
But lecturing has never been an effective teaching technique and now that information is everywhere, some say it's a waste of time. Indeed, physicists have the data to prove it.
Confessions of a Converted Lecturer
Eric Mazur: "I thought I was a good teacher until I discovered my students were just memorizing information rather than learning to understand the material. Who was to blame? The students? The material? I will explain how I came to the agonizing conclusion that the culprit was neither of these. It was my teaching that caused students to fail! I will show how I have adjusted my approach to teaching and how it has improved my students' performance significantly." Eric Mazur is the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University. An internationally recognized scientist and researcher, he leads a vigorous research program in optical physics and supervises one of the largest research groups in the Physics Department at Harvard University.
Creating Better Physics Learners
Training more high-school physics teachers and increasing student learning are two of the challenges facing math, science, and engineering education in the United States. Noah Finkelstein is an Associate Professor of physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, conducting research in physics education. As director of the Physics Education Research group at Colorado, he studies conditions that support students' interest and ability in physcs. The sub-discipline of physics education research is now well established and boasts robust lines of research that range from investigations of student learning of specific topics (e.g., how students understand propagation of light) to implementing andcd studying the implementation of educational reforms and what makes them work or not work.