Chapter 1 Educational Reform Context
¶Physicists interested in education have a long history of efforts to enhance student learning. The American Association of Physics Teachers (www.AAPT.org) was formed in 1930. Physicists interested in education were motivated to form the AAPT because they were “unhappy with the lack of attention to education on the part of the American Physical Society” according to the AAPT history website https://www.aapt.org/aboutaapt/history/aaptformation.cfm. Early leaders included John O. Frayne, Paul E. Klopsteg, and Glen W. Warner:
In April 1928 an article appeared in School Science and Mathematics 28, 345 (1928) entitled “The Plight of College Physics,” and written by John O. Frayne of Antioch College. Frayne described the low level of physics teaching, especially in universities, noted the negative attitude in APS, and advocated forming a new organization devoted to the teaching of physics. Klopsteg got in touch with him, and they met in Chicago together with Glen W. Warner, editor of School Science and Mathematics. Together they compiled a list of 115 people who might be interested in a society of physics teachers.
Homer L. Dodge chaired a luncheon at the 1930 American Physical Society-American Association for the Advancement of Science joint meeting, where Klopsteg made a motion “that there be organized an informal association of those interested in the teaching of physics” and Dodge became the first president of the new organization. AAPT now offers a wide variety of venues for sharing insights and experiences through electronic media, national conferences, geographically organized section meetings, and two journals, American Journal of Physics (AJP) and The Physics Teacher.
With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the 1950's, a group of university physicists and high school teachers led by Jerrold Zacharias and Francis Friedman formed the Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC), based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They developed a new textbook, PSSC Physics (Haber-Schaim et al., 1960) with extensive resources intended to teach high school students “to think like physicists.” (https://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/pssc/).
In the 1960's, also with NSF support, a second effort was launched by Gerald Holton, Fletcher Watson, and James Rutherford at Harvard University, to develop a “humanistic, historically oriented textbook” Project Physics (Rutherford, Holton, & Watson, 1970) also with extensive resources such as innovative equipment, films, and readers. See (http://www.scienceeducationencore.org/library/origins/the-origin-of-project-physics/). Project Physics evolved into a more recent textbook still in print, Understanding Physics (Cassidy, Holton, & Rutherford, 2002).
The 1970's saw the beginnings of physics education research (PER) occurring within physics departments. The Committee on Research in Physics Education formed within AAPT in 1980 with Lillian C. McDermott as chair to “encourage and follow research on the teaching and learning of physics and related topics” (https://www.aapt.org/aboutaapt/organization/physed.cfm#CP_JUMP_7546).
By the mid 1990's, when the conversations about reforming the upper-level physics courses began at OSU, physics education research was well established. Physics Education Research-Central (http://www.compadre.org/per/) provides a useful history of the emergence and evolution of physics education research within physics departments (http://www.compadre.org/per/wiki/PER_History) as well as links to an extensive collection of PER resources.