If You Can’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It: A Tool to Get Ideas to Improve Physics Teacher Education at Your Institution

Stephanie Chasteen, Chasteen Educational Consulting
David May, American Physical Society

Given the insufficient number of well-qualified future physics teachers in our country, you may be one of the many faculty members wondering how your program could do better. Some physics departments have yet to establish a pathway for their majors to achieve their license to teach. If this sounds like you, you are not alone! About 40% of physics departments have no physics teacher education program, and most departments do not graduate a single future physics teacher in a two-year period.¹ Even among the departments with teacher education programs, recruitment is a challenge; very few departments license more than two teachers in a year.

Regardless of your department’s particular challenges, you may be aware of the wealth of reports and advice on how best to prepare future physics teachers (see https://www.phystec.org/publicity/). But how can you identify the best next steps?

The Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC) was established in 2001 to improve and promote the education of future physics teachers through a wide variety of activities, including funding programs, undertaking research, and supporting the development of a physics teacher education (PTE) community (see http://phystec.org). The project has identified a need to help physics faculty analyze their local landscape vis-à-vis physics teacher education and choose strategies that will help address their local challenges. Based on systematic studies of what the strongest physics teacher education programs do, they have developed a set of 10 questions to ask yourself about your local program:

How strong is physics teacher education at your institution?
10 questions for departments to consider

1. Is there institutional support for your physics teacher education program and program team?
2. Do you have a strong program team?
3. How is your relationship with the School of Education?
4. Are you recruiting students into the program?
5. Are there streamlined and flexible pathways by which physics students may be certified to teach physics?
6. Does the program provide strong preparation in physics and physics pedagogy?
7. Does the program provide practical K-12 physics teaching experience?
8. Are future physics teachers mentored for career success?
9. Is there a community for physics teachers?
10. Do you assess and communicate program outcomes to generate support?

These questions (available as a downloadable handout at http://phystec.org/thriving) are good conversation starters for any program (including with administrators!). They are aligned with a specific measurement tool – a rubric – which was developed to help guide faculty and departments in their program strategy under the philosophy that “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.”² The rubric is thus intended to support self-assessment, feedback, reflection, and continuous improvement of local programs. It also serves as a catalog or “shopping list” of things that program leaders might consider focusing on for improvement. The Physics Teacher Education Program Analysis (PTEPA) Rubric was extensively developed and validated based on the features that thriving physics teacher education programs tend to have.³

Completing the rubric can be a good way to start a conversation with the school of education about certification options, or to gather a program team for self-reflection. Some faculty also plan to use it to advocate for resources, both internally, or externally, by identifying strengths, gaps, and improvements to the program. Possible opportunities for completing the rubric include:

• When applying for funding (e.g., Noyce, PhysTEC).
• When preparing to make a case to administrators for PTE program funding.
• When preparing annual reports on the PTE program.
• During PTE program planning or review.
• During department strategic planning or retreats.

A variety of supports are provided for interpreting PTEPA Rubric results, including an interactive Excel version of the rubric with automatic data visualizations and an ability to compare last year’s results to the current year, an action planning template, and a User’s Guide. At the top right is an example of sample program data, which shows the percent of items rated at each level within each category of the rubric - this (and other) visuals are available by sharing your data with us at phystec@aps.org.

Whether you are just starting out in physics teacher education or trying to improve an existing program, the rubric can serve as a useful tool to allow measurement and feedback that supports reflection and continuous improvement – leading to higher quality physics instruction for all. We are also eager to partner with researchers to further develop the rubric and use it in research studies.

To learn more

PTEPA Rubric and associated materials: http://phystec.org/thriving

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under grant numbers PHY-0808790 and PHY-1707990 and the APS 21st Century Campaign

Bio

Stephanie Chasteen is an independent consultant and external evaluator, as well as a senior advisor to the Center for STEM Learning at the University of Colorado Boulder. She conducts research and evaluation on STEM educational initiatives, with a focus on departmental change and faculty use of research-based teaching methods, and provides external evaluation for a variety of projects such as PhysTEC and Effective Practices for Physics Programs (EP3). More about her independent work at http://chasteenconsulting.com.

David May is an education and diversity program manager at the American Physical Society, and the program manager for PhysTEC. He helps to develop, direct, evaluate, and manage the full portfolio of PhysTEC programs for improving the education of future physics teachers.

(Endnotes)

1. D. E. Meltzer, M. Plisch, and S. Vokos, Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action. A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP) (American Physical Society, College Park, MD, 2012).

2. Attributed to business expert Peter Drucker.

3. S. V. Chasteen, R. E. Scherr and M. Plisch, A study of thriving physics teacher education programs: Development of the Physics Teacher Education Program Analysis (PTEPA) Rubric. (American Physical Society, College Park, MD, 2018).

Disclaimer – The articles and opinion pieces found in this issue of the APS Forum on Education Newsletter are not peer refereed and represent solely the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of the APS.