Empowering Learners of Physics: Helping Instructors Use Physics Education Research

In recent decades physics education research has revealed various difficulties that many students have in learning physics. One of these difficulties is that many students do not link classroom material to their real-life experiences. Numerous solutions have been proposed. Textbook writers have steadily increased the numbers of real-life phenomena that they include. Further, several teams have proposed instructional approaches based on direct exposure to real- life material. Such treatments have been shown to lead to an improvement in student interest and understanding. However these innovations are not widely adopted by instructors (lecturers and teaching assistants). Many are still using the traditional teaching techniques. Interviews with students and instructors reveal some of the reasons for this. A professional development course was set up in the department to familiarize instructors with the issues in the physics education research literature. This measure was taken upon the recognition that we needed to motivate the teaching assistants to help us implement the reformed teaching approach. The impact of the program was apparent in the re-organization of first-year tutorials and the attitudes of those involved.