1Teaching and learning physics: A model for coordinatingphysics instruction, outreach, and researchNoah D. Finkelstein1Abstract. This paper describes the development of a new universityphysics course designed to integrate physics, education, research, andcommunity partnerships. The coordinated system of activities links thenew course to local community efforts in pre-college education, universityeducation, university outreach, and research on teaching and learning.As documented both by gains on conceptual surveys and by qualitativeanalyses of field-notes and audiotapes of class, the course facilitatesstudent learning of physics, as well as student mastery of theories andpractices of teaching and learning physics. Simultaneously, the coursesupports university efforts in community outreach and creates a richenvironment for education research. The following narrative describesthe motivation, structure, implementation, effectiveness, and potential forextending and sustaining this alternative model for university level scienceeducation.Keywords: physics, education, research, outreach, teaching, servicelearningI. Introduction.The explicit mission of many large-scale research universities includes three coreelements: the pursuit of excellence in research, teaching, and community service.However since the mid-twentieth century, many universities have heavily emphasizedresearch without equal commitment to teaching or community service. Efforts directed atsupporting high quality teaching (at the university or pre-college level) and partnershipswith the communities that house the universities are largely treated as separate, and oftennon-essential, programs at these institutions of higher education. This paper addressesthe question of how such institutions might begin to coordinate these three seeminglydisparate elements of the university mission into a single activity system that enhances allthree.The focal point of the coordinated system is a class entitled Teaching andLearning Physics offered within the physics department (Finkelstein, 2003). Theemphasis of the present work is to describe the structure of the class and the impact of the 1 Department of Physics University of Colorado, Boulder. The author may be reached [email protected] © Noah Finkelstein, 2004 all rights reserved, do not quotewithout permission of the author. This research was conducted with the support of the NationalScience Foundation’s Post-doctoral Fellowships in Mathematics, Science, Engineering, andTechnology Education (NSF’s PFSMETE Grant Number: DGE-9809496) under the mentorshipof Michael Cole (University of California, San Diego) and Andrea diSessa (University ofCalifornia, Berkeley). I wish to thank these mentors and my colleagues at the Laboratory ofComparative Human Cognition and those in the Department of Physics (Barbara Jones, EdwardPrice and Omar Clay) at UCSD for intriguing discussions, insights, and their support. Finally, Iam grateful for the support and critical feedback of the members of the Physics EducationResearch Group at the University of Colorado.2class on students. Through the use of pre- and post- tests of students’ conceptual grasp ofthe physics content, audio tapes of classes, ethnographic field-notes, course evaluationsand student interviews, the class is presented as a case study to demonstrate that such anapproach is useful for improving students’ grasp of physics and of teaching. At the sametime, in addition to documenting the effects that the course has on students, this studyexamines how well this environment is suited for physics education research, howsupporting and surrounding institutions respond, and the potential for sustaining such apursuit. The discussions of lines of educational research, and the likelihood of sustainingthis course follow the course description and student evaluation.The effort to create a coordinated system of teaching, research, and communitypartnership builds on recent efforts to support student learning in physics, to incorporateeducation research within departments of physics, and to address a critical shortage ofteachers and lack of diversity at the university level. More and more widely, universityfaculty acknowledge that the traditional lecture-style physics course fails to impart adeep-seated conceptual understanding of course content (Hake, 1998; McDermott andRedish, 1999; Redish, 2003). As a result, in some institutions, a new breed of physicsclass is evolving -- one that encourages student engagement. Coupled with thisrecognition, the physics community is beginning to re-assess both the goals ofundergraduate courses and what constitutes the discipline more broadly. One outcome ofthis reassessment is the idea that education research is an integral part of the discipline ofphysics (APS, 1999). Another outcome is that more departments of physics and schoolsof education acknowledge the need to better prepare teachers of physics (Schmidt et al.1999; TIMSS, 1999). Furthermore, in California and elsewhere, a host of politicalinitiatives and educational reforms have challenged the University’s ability to meet itscharter commitment to serve all of the state’s population.2 At the same time, studies ofservice learning programs, those that send university students to engage in community-based activities as part of their education, demonstrate significant and improvedoutcomes for students engaging in these activities (Astin et al, 2000; SLCH, 2003). As aresult, a significant response from both the legislature and the university system is tosupport community outreach in an effort to better prepare current and potential students,especially those from traditionally under-represented populations.This research program addresses these related problems: 1) the improvement ofstudent interest, understanding, and expertise in physics, teaching, and learning; 2) thecreation of community-based activities which address the outreach and service interestsof the university; 3) the provision of a research site for the study of the teaching andlearning processes. The coordinated ensemble, represented by this course, is anopportunity to merge these many agenda. Such an effort follows the work of Cole andothers who create rich, theoretically motivated environments that foster student learningand support fundamental research on development and culture (Cole, 1996; Cole, 1998).II. The Activity.The course on Teaching and Learning