Part V 2016: Re-envisioning the Paradigms in Physics Program
¶Over the prior two decades, many changes had occurred as new faculty began teaching the upper-division courses, new technologies emerged, and new physics specialties became prominent in the current faculty's research programs. Several long-standing issues as well as new challenges had become apparent and needed to be addressed.
During winter and spring terms 2016, a small group of faculty, the Paradigms 2.0 Committee facilitated re-envisioning the Paradigms in Physics Program. They worked together with the faculty to understand the department's current context and culture, created a shared, renewed vision for the upper-division curriculum, and collaboratively discussed and planned ways to make that renewed vision happen. Their decision-making processes were similar to those described by Beach [2], p. ix, in the framework guiding this study.
The guiding questions for this part of the study were:
- After two decades of offering the Paradigms in Physics program for juniors and seniors, how did the faculty re-envision this program in light of new faculty's perspectives and current students' needs?
In particular:
- What administrative support had been helpful and needed to continue?
- Who led the re-envisioning effort?
- How did they gather input from the rest of the faculty and keep them informed of progress?
- What did they do during the re-envisioning process?
- How did they prepare for a faculty vote on their proposed changes?
- What was required for gaining university approval of these changes?
- How did they continue to engage the faculty in collaboratively discussing and developing plans?
- What new process helped new faculty learn how to teach in the paradigms in physics courses?
Data sources for this part of the qualitative study included documents prepared for faculty meetings, audio recordings of Paradigms 2.0 committee meetings and upper division curriculum committee meetings, course catalog descriptions, field notes from observations of some of the courses, and audio-recorded interviews with the four faculty members forming the Paradigms 2.0 committee. The lead author selected excerpts from the interviews to illustrate the insights of these individuals with respect to the issues stated above.