Research in Physics Education
The design of Virtual Classrooms' online physics courses has been influenced by the reading of a number of the studies in physics education. The overwhelming conclusion of these studies is that the degree of student participation is key to obtaining a good conceptual understanding of physics.
For this reason, we emphasize the students making his/her own observations, asking questions and coming up with answers to classmates' questions. We do everything we can to move the student from the role of a spectator to that of an active participant.
One very good recent paper summarizing the work in the field of physics education is "Teaching Physics: Figuring Out What Works", Edward F. Redish and Richard N. Steinberg, Physics Today, Vol. 52 (January 1999), pp 24-30.
The authors in this article ask three critical questions:
The authors make this comment on the field of physics teaching research:
"Over the past two decades, an increasing number of physicists have been turning their research attention to problems of physics education. A dozen physics education research programs now exist in research physics departments around the country."
They also say:
"But the by-now large body of physics education research (reference 2 cites more than 200 items) has provided many solid and surprising insights that can help physics instructors improve their judgments about what is happening in their own classrooms."
Reference 2 cited in this article is:
"Resource Letter PER-1: Physics Education Research," Lillian C. McDermott and Edward F. Redish, submitted to the American Journal of Physics, (1999)
Teachers and parents who wish to learn more about the research in this field can locate a much larger list of studies from these two references. They can both be downloaded from the Internet at:
http://www.physics.umd.edu/rgroups/ripe/perg/cpt.htmlThe papers referenced above are near the top of the list of papers on this site.