United States

Teachers in the United States rate their lives better than all other occupation groups, trailing only physicians. Despite this fact, there is a shortage of secondary math and science teachers in this country. One reason for this disparity is a lack of accurate and positive information about the profession. To correct this disparity, the Get the Facts Out (GFO) project has developed research-based, user-tested materials that provide accurate messaging about teacher happiness, autonomy, and financial well-being. As part of this project which investigates how these resources can affect the number of math and science majors who pursue grade 7-12 teaching, we have collected in-person and virtual focus group data from students and faculty members at 6 universities from around the country. These results provide insight into perceptions of grade 7-12 teaching and into how GFO resources are being used in recruitment efforts. Implications for teacher recruitment will be discussed.

AAPT WM 21

Teacher Recruitment: Focus Group Insights from Six Universities

teacher recruitment

teacher preparation

qualitative

AAPT® is a strong professional physics science society dedicated to the pursuit of excellence in physical science education.

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technical paper

Lewis University is in the first year of its PhysTEC Recruiting Grant, which is intended to help increase the number of physics teacher candidates. Lewis has a B.A. in Physics for High School Teaching Licensure and an M.A. in Secondary Education, and we have historically graduated&nbsp;one physics teacher per year on average. As part of this grant work, we are developing&nbsp;a new accelerated Bachelors in Physics to Masters in Secondary Education track.&nbsp;We are&nbsp;also modifying Get the Facts Out materials to reflect&nbsp;data from the Chicagoland region and are using these materials&nbsp;to&nbsp;educate faculty about high school physics teaching as a career, to recruit current majors at the University into physics teaching, and to recruit high school and community college students. This presentation will discuss these efforts, including how we have modified our recruiting plans to engage these groups remotely due to the pandemic.

Getting the Facts Out about Physics Teaching at Lewis University

This talk addresses the collection methods, plans, and preliminary baseline data for Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University--a private,&nbsp;aeronautical-focused&nbsp;university that may be considered quite removed from the secondary teacher pipeline. The underlying presumption of the "Get the Facts Out" (GFO) project is that perceptions of grade 7-12 teaching impact the number of undergraduates who choose to enter that profession. Changing the conversation around the grade 7-12 teaching profession at institutions with deliberate and focused efforts to recruit, train, and prepare secondary physics teachers is, of course,&nbsp;of&nbsp;upmost importance. However,&nbsp;the GFO project aims&nbsp;to reach anyone who influences employment decisions of undergraduate students. Therefore, analysis of&nbsp;this and other similar institutions&nbsp;may&nbsp;help serve&nbsp;as a measure of&nbsp;general perceptions&nbsp;for GFO's longitudinal&nbsp;study.

It's All About Perspective: Where an Aeronautical-university fits into GFO

This work applied exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and graded Item Response Theory (IRT) to a large sample (N=4522) of Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) post-test scores. EFA failed to reproduce the factor structure suggested by the authors of the CLASS and strongly supported the alternate 3-factor model suggested by Douglas et al.&nbsp; Graded IRT allowed an examination of the progression from non-expert-like to expert-like beliefs. This progression was generally uniform with a linear relation between the difficulty of each step in the progression. Some items within the factors identified by Douglas et al. had difficulty and discrimination parameters substantially different than other items in the factor suggesting the subscale is not unidimensional. The expert-like latent ability trait estimated by IRT correlated more strongly with measures of physics performance than measures of general academic performance indicating that expert-like beliefs are not a general property of high performing students.

Exploring the CLASS with Item Response Theory

Informal physics learning environments bring physicists, physics students, and public audiences together in a variety of formats. Popular events include youth camps, public lectures, and demo shows. However, these format-focused labels do not illuminate underlying factors important for the design and implementation of informal physics activities. Here, we present results from a qualitative research study to investigate the aspects of informal physics programs that are critical to their functionality. Drawing from organizational theory, we code interviews with program leaders for emergent themes within the broad categories of personnel, audience, resources, institution, and programs. The emergent themes form the basis for our developing model of key components that are necessary for informal physics programs to function. We share our current model for these key components and discuss future work to develop practitioner tools to assess programs.

Developing A Model of Key Components of Informal Physics Programming

A preliminary analysis of research themes investigated by the PER community over the last ten years will be presented. A text-based analysis of all contributed Physics Education Research Conference (PERC) proceedings between 2010 to 2019 is analyzed to look for both emerging and thematic patterns to strategic categories such as areas of research, populations being studied, research questions/goals, and research methods. PERC proceedings were selected given the central role of PERC to the PER community. PERC proceedings represent the community across scope of projects from small to large, across stage of projects from beginning to finished, and across investigator experience from new to established researchers. The goal of this work is to provide insight into the community's history and trajectory as well as collect a databased of who is working in which strategic area to improve networking and collaboration among Physics Education Researchers.

Investigating Research Themes for The Physics Education Research Community

The affective domain of learning is one of the emerging fields in physics education research. Mindfulness is an important, but often overlooked aspect of the affective domain. The effects of mindfulness on one's mind-body have been studied in multiple disciplines including psychology and medicine. Many K-12 schools have already started to implement mindfulness practices in their curricula to foster teaching and learning practices. However, there has not been any research on this domain in physics education. We are studying the effects of short-term mindfulness sessions on students’ learning processes in physics. The participants in our study completed several five-minute-long mindfulness sessions, during which they observed their breathing objectively. The participants were assigned introductory physics problems before and after the interventions. We found that they solved the problems faster after the interventions. Our results indicate that short-term mindfulness practice may improve physics problem-solving efficiency.

Short-Term Mindfulness Intervention Improves the Efficiency of Solving Physics Problem

While these rather odd times in society continue, we still strive to bring the excitement of physics to many diverse audiences through physics demonstration shows.&nbsp; I will review the issues these efforts expose, some of the ways we can incorporate fun and informative demonstrations, and the problems one may encounter planning and performing these shows.

The Virtual Physics Demo Show: A Primer

Walking trail&nbsp;&nbsp;is &nbsp;geographically localised around&nbsp;kindergarten. Different phenomena&nbsp;&nbsp;are used as&nbsp;&nbsp;trigger for education. The&nbsp;&nbsp;designed &nbsp;walk trail is a practical endorsement, where the students will use fieldwork skills, to identify &nbsp;physical phenomena&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;through&nbsp;the built environment.&nbsp;&nbsp;They view physical phenomena with&nbsp;a holistic approach, improving their ecological consciousness. We attempted to follow research steps, &nbsp;set forth by inquiry-based learning :&nbsp;a) trigger for interest, b) reminder of basic knowledge/formulation of hypotheses, c) experimentation/trials, d) formulation of conclusions, e) applications/generalization according to learning. &nbsp;

Teaching to The Child Attending Infant School, Following Walk Trail

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended how every educational organization operates.&nbsp; Outreach programs are hit especially hard, considering the potential for child-to-child virus transmission via hands-on equipment and community spread through traveling from one location to another.&nbsp; The Physics Factory (www.physicsbus.org)&nbsp;has been examining a variety of operational changes so that we can continue inspiring children with the excitement of science without endangering their health or their families. These changes will be implemented in our newly-acquired 8th Physics Bus, which will be serving Gainesville FL and surrounding communities.&nbsp; During our session we will welcome participants aboard and let you explore freely from the safety of your own home.

Mobile Physics Outreach during a Global Pandemic

We will discuss our unique approach to teaching physics in the age of COVID.&nbsp; We set up alternate tracks for our calculus-based physics course that allowed for active&nbsp;learning, introduction to scientific&nbsp;computing, and provided flexibility&nbsp;for students to attend in person classes or online classes when appropriate.&nbsp; The two tracks were outside physics in person literally on the university softball field and asynchronous online.&nbsp; We will share details of the approach as well as lessons learned.

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Teacher Recruitment: Focus Group Insights from Six Universities

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Getting the Facts Out about Physics Teaching at Lewis University

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