Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty members have faced a changed and challenging environment. They were faced with reallocating their time across various teaching, research, and service responsibilities; adjusting their teaching format, testing, and labs; and dealing with reduced access to the resources they needed to teach…

By the time people earn physics PhDs, they have learned a great deal about physics and how research is conducted. However, physics PhDs also develop skills and knowledge in a number of related areas, such as advanced mathematics, programming, modeling, and technical writing. Physics PhDs draw upon an arsenal of skills and knowledge in their…

The Advanced Placement® (AP®) Program offers high school students the opportunity to take rigorous coursework in high school and receive college credit for AP Exam scores that meet or exceed the requirements of their attending institution. Students receiving AP credit are typically exempted from an introductory level course or series of courses…

Physics bachelor's degree production has more than doubled since the recent low in 1999, and enrollment in U.S. undergraduate physics programs continues to increase. The all-time high of 7,329 bachelor's degrees in the class of 2013 represents the 14th consecutive year that the number of physics bachelor's conferred has increased.…

The 2012 National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education was designed to provide up-to-date information and to identify trends in the areas of teacher background and experience, curriculum and instruction, and the availability and use of instructional resources. This compendium, one of a series, details the results of a survey of high school…

This study evaluated an approach to professional development for middle school science teachers by closely examining one grade 8 course that embodies that approach. Using a cluster-randomized experimental design, the study tested the effectiveness of the Making Sense of SCIENCE[TM] professional development course on force and motion (Daehler,…

The 2012 National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education was designed to provide up-to-date information and to identify trends in the areas of teacher background and experience, curriculum and instruction, and the availability and use of instructional resources. A total of 7,752 science and mathematics teachers in schools across the United…

The federal "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" (NCLB) legislation required school districts to ensure that all teachers of core academic subjects met the requirements to be designated highly qualified by July 1, 2006. However, because no Maryland counties were able to comply with the 100 percent highly qualified designation by July 1,…

The purpose of this paper is to carefully examine the evolution of students' theory building and modeling, critical components of scientific epistemologies, over a unit of study on sinking and floating in one third/fourth grade classroom. The study described in this paper follows in the tradition of Design Experiments (Brown 1992, Collins 1990)…

This report traces the growth of high school physics in American school over the past twenty years. Highlights of the report include: (1) Enrollments in high school physics continue to grow; (2) Increase in number and proportion of physics teachers; (3) Number of students taking honors, advance placement or second-year physics course has nearly…

This article describes a research study concerning students' conceptions and reasonings about fluids and pressure in static situations. After a preliminary survey involving interviews and observations in class, some written questions were answered by various groups, totalling 428 Italian and French pupils in upper secondary school, 458 first-year…

This case study is an inquiry about feedback in the context of professional development. It tells the story of the feedback process between a teacher and his colleague as they work with a group of adolescent science students. The entire process is reported in a day-to-day description of the interaction between the two men: (1) "Beginning the…

The status and future direction of high school physics instruction is considered in this report. The text is supported by many tables and illustrations and is organized into six chapters. Chapters discuss physics enrollments and curriculum; demographics of the physics teacher population; current teaching conditions, resources, and activities; high…

Describes a study of the professional qualifications of high school physics teachers conducted by the American Institute of Physics (AIP). Concludes that high school physics teachers are better trained than they are given credit for, and that instances of utterly unqualified instructors are rare. (WRM)

This study reports enrollments in general science, biology, chemistry, and physics in public high schools, the additional science offerings, the number of teachers serving these pupils, class size, grade placement of science subjects, time allotments for recitation and laboratory, and troublesome problems related to the teaching of science. The…