THE ROLE OF TEXAS PHYSICS DEPARTMENTS IN PREPARING K-12 TEACHERS
Charges To The Breakout Groups B1 And B2
E. Leonard Jossem
The Ohio State University

I have been asked to present the charges to Groups B1 and B2.
Since you already have them in hard copy in the folders you have received, and you have, I am sure, encountered them more than once, I shall try to be expeditious in performing this part of my task.
So here is the charge to Group B1

Group B1:

"What should K-12 teachers be prepared to do?"

Charge: "Define a set of outcomes for a physics course for pre service teachers and/or for a physics course enrolling students who intend to become teachers. These outcomes should define the set of skills that a pre-service teacher should have when completing a physics course or course sequence. Again the skills may be different depending on what level the teacher will be working."

and here is the charge to Group B2.

Group B2
"What can college physics departments do to help K-12 teachers get this training?"

Charge: Develop both short and long term plans for physics departments to better prepare K-12 teachers to teach science. These can take any form from curriculum development to development of collaborations with other institutions and colleges of education at your institution or neighboring institution.

These charges are quite specific, so I would like to make a few comments about the broader context in which our discussions take place.

Let me remind you about the scope of the task, as we take a look at the Educational System in the USA.

The 15K school districts involved in K-12 education have a very considerable degree of autonomy, and 44.8% of their revenues come from local sources. The Federal Government contributes only about 6.8%.

The projection is that in the next decade about 2 million of the current 2.9 million K-12 teachers will leave the system and will have to be replaced.
They will not all be physics teachers, but we have our work cut out for us. It is a job of major proportions.

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The membership of all of the science- oriented professional organizations shown here (AAAS, NSTA, APS and AAPT) taken together is dwarfed by either of the more general educational organizations ( NEA and AFT).

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The subject of Teacher Preparation has an enormous literature.
I have put together for the use of the AAPT Area Committee on Teacher Preparation a "Reference Library" of articles and books broadly addressing the subject. Copies of the CD containing this library are available here and the full contents of the CD may be down-loaded freely from my web site:
http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~jossem/REF/TOC.htm

There is, however, still much to be learned in this area. Some indication of how much may be found in the report of the

Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy

U N I V E R S I T Y O F W A S H I N G T O N

Teacher Preparation Research: Current Knowledge, Gaps, and Recommendations
Suzanne M. Wilson , Robert E. Floden, Joan Ferrini-Mundy
Michigan State University
February 2001 (Document R-01-3)
A Research Report prepared for the U.S. Department of Education by the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy in collaboration with Michigan State University

Many of the questions we are discussion here are also addressed in this report. The full 96 page report is available at the web site:
http://depts.washington.edu/ctpmail/PDFs/TeacherPrep-WFFM-02-2001.pdf

There is certainly more than enough work for us all, and at all levels of instruction. Rita Colwell, the Director, The National Science Foundation put it well in an address to the AAAS Science Policy Seminar Series (September 16, 1998)

" Furthermore, we cannot expect the task of science and math education to be the sole responsibility of K through 12 teachers while scientists and graduate students live only in their universities and laboratories. There is no group of people who should feel more responsible for science and math education in this nation than our scientists and scientists-to-be. In fact, I would say that America's continuing leadership will depend more on the caliber of its human resource than on any other resource. It will not be enough to have a top layer of scientific elite, and another of mediocrity below. And the situation is really worsened by widespread public science illiteracy."

"All politics is local."
Thomas Phillip O’Neill,Jr. 1912-1994

"All teaching and learning is local"
Anon.

"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate."
Steven Wright

"Brighten the corner where YOU are."
Ina Mae Duley Ogdon 1872-1964

Thank you.

The Role Of Texas Physics Departments In Preparing K-12 Teachers
Stephen F. Austin University , Nacogdoches, TX March 6-7, 2002