Students in North Carolina's science pedagogy course do an experiment as lecturer Alice Churukian looks on.

 

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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Project Report 2009

Goals & Outcomes

Goal

The goal of the PhysTEC project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is to establish a program in which science majors prepare to become high school science teachers as they pursue their undergraduate degrees, and to recruit students to come to UNC to prepare to become teachers.  As the flagship institution in the UNC System, we hope to play a leadership role in enhancing teacher preparation programs throughout North Carolina.  The UNC-BEST (UNC Baccalaureate Education in Science and Teaching) program is a full partnership between the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education, and initially involves the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Department of Biology.  In 2009/10 we will expand the program to include Geological Sciences and Mathematics, and hope in the future to add Chemistry.  We graduated our first physics teacher in May 2009, and will in the coming years continue to add to the number of UNC baccalaureate graduates who become high-quality physics teachers.  The PhysTEC project provides a Teacher in Residence for the project, supports meetings of our Teacher Advisory Group, and provides resources for reform of introductory physics courses and other activities within the program.

Selected Outcomes

• We graduated our first physics teacher in May 2009.  The UNC-BEST graduating class was featured in news release from the College of Arts & Sciences and in the Commencement program. Another student who took the pedagogy course in 2008 but did not join UNC-BEST has graduated and will teach in a private school in Southern Pines, NC.
• We successfully taught the physics pedagogy course for the second time, enrolling 7 students of whom 1 plans to apply to the UNC-BEST program and one is considering doing so.  Some of the others took the course too late to complete the UNC-BEST program before graduating but are considering careers involving secondary school teaching.
• We admitted our second cohort of 6 UNC-BEST students (including 1 physics major).
• We have incorporated the Geological Sciences and Mathematics Departments into UNC-BEST and will enroll their students in the program (pending approval from the NC Dept. of Public Instruction) in Fall 2009.
• We obtained funding from the US Dept. of Education’s Teachers for a Competitive Tomorrow program to expand UNC-BEST to include mathematics and geology, and to establish an induction program.
• We received funding from the NC Space Grant program to support a small conference for high school teachers that we will host in December 2009.  The conference will present current advances in physics and in pedagogy.  The Morehead Planetarium and Science Center on our campus is an important partner in this enterprise.
• We taught our required, for-credit TA seminar for the first time in Fall 2009.
• We have instituted a program for undergraduate TAs modeled on the Colorado program. We will enroll our first Undergraduate Teaching Assistants (UTAs) in Fall 2009.
• We continue to expand the number of faculty and TAs using interactive pedagogy.
• We have put a course in physical science for elementary education majors “on the books” and will develop it over the next year for a possible first offering in AY2010/11.  The course will use the Physics in Everyday Thinking model as its starting point.
• We continue to make progress toward instituting a SCALE-UP-type introductory physics course, although we will have to adapt it to a more conventional lecture room since no optimally-configured room is available.