The ICPE's main aim is to promote
the exchange of information and views amongst members
of the international community of physicists in the
general field of physics education. To pursue this
aim, it tries to assist the communication of
information concerning education in the physical
sciences at all levels. This information includes in
its scope the assessment of the standards of physics
teaching and learning, ways in which the facilities
for the study of physics might be improved, and ways
to help physics teachers incorporate current
knowledge about physics, physics pedagogy, and
results of research in physics education into their
courses and curricula.
A.1 Conferences
The promotion and support of
international conferences is one of the main ways in
which the commission seeks to achieve its aims. The
main meetings which it has helped sponsor during the
1997-1999 term are as follows:
1. Taller Iberoamericano de
Enseńanza de al Fisica Universitaria. Havana, Cuba
January 20-24, 1997
2. Sixth Inter-American Conference
on Physics Education. La Falda, Argentina June
30-July 4, 1997
3. Creativity in Physics Education.
Sopron, Hungary. August 16-22, 1997
A published conference report
is available from Professor Marx at the Eötvös
University in Budapest. The 1997 ICPE meeting was
held on the 24th and 25th of August in Budapest
immediately after the meeting.
4. Hands-on Experiments in Physics
Education. Duisburg, Germany.
August 23-28, 1998
This was a GIREP conference. A
publication of the proceedings of this conference
is being prepared. The 1998 ICPE meeting was held
in Duisburg on the 22nd and 23rd of August,
immediately after this meeting.
5. New Technologies in Physics
Education. Hefei, PR China
October 12-22, 1998
6. International Conference of
Physics Teachers and Educators. Guilin, PR China
August 19-23, 1999
The 1999 ICPE meeting was held
in Guilin on the 17th and 18th of August
immediately before the international conference.
A.2 The Medal of the
International Commission on Physics Education
This medal is awarded for
contributions to physics education which are major in
scope and impact and which have extended over a
considerable period. In 1997, the medal was awarded
to Professor George Marx (Budapest, Hungary). In 1998
it was awarded to Professor Dieter Nachtigall
(Dortmund, Germany).
A.3 The ICPE Newsletter
This continues to be
produced on a semi-annual basis and distributed free
of charge to about 1000 persons and institutions
worldwide. The newsletter has been edited since early
1995 by Professor Ed Redish (Maryland, USA). He also
manages the Commission's website with address http://www.physics.umd.edu/icpe/.
A.4 Other
Activities
In early 1998 the
Commission published a book entitled Connecting
Research in Physics Education with Teacher Education
with chapters by over twenty authors who are
authorities in their various fields. The book is not
published in print - it is available on a website
http://www.physics.ohiostate.edu/`jossem/ICPE/Books.html
with no restriction on downloading. It is also
available at nominal cost on diskette. Translations
into French and Spanish are in preparation with a
grant from the UNESCO. The Commission has also
prepared a diskette about selected posters useful in
physics education and in arousing interest in physics
amongst students. The text of four books on
undergraduate physics education produced in the 1970s
and now out of print are being put on a website for
free availability in collaboration with the USA
project NOVA and with a grant from the UK Institute
of Physics. Work is also in progress to select papers
particularly useful to teachers from past conference
proceedings and copy these also onto a website.
Members have been maintaining links with several
regional networks concerned with physics education,
including the European Physical Society and GIREP,
and with other international organizations, notably
UNESCO.
B. Developments
in Physics Education
Four main trends can
be discerned in the recent development of physics
education. One is the continuation and strengthening
of the development impact of research into ways by
which pupils learn new concepts and practices of
pedagogy, including assessment. Research into human
cognition is beginning to frame useful lessons about
optimum routes for teaching and learning and to open
up particularly challenging innovations in the use of
computer based learning programmes so that
participants can work at the problems of selecting,
transforming and adapting new thinking into reformed
classroom work. The Internet published book is an
example of work to convey research lesson in a form
useful to practitioners. Whilst in past years such
activity has been directed mainly at school level,
there is now a new focus also on teaching and
learning at the undergraduate level. As the
participation rate in higher education increases in
all countries, professors can no longer assume that
any subject expert can undertake teaching by merely
'talking the subject'. The ICPE sponsored conference
in Maryland in 1996 was a milestone in this
development, as is the two-volume report on this
meeting published by the American Institute of
Physics.
A second trend is
marked by a variety of explorations in which physics
educators are attempting to broaden the scope of
physics as a component of education. The use of toys
in physics education, the use of museums and other
informal centres for learning, a new emphasis on
physics in the environment and for environment
protection, are all examples of moves which have two
main motives. One is to make physics more attractive
to young people by engaging their interest in it
through themes and problems of relevance to their
daily lives. Another is to develop a sense of social
responsibility amongst future physicists, and to give
them basis for making critical judgements about the
impact of science and technology amongst all future
citizens. Underlying such moves is a new realization
that physics education at all but the most
specialized level of tertiary education should not be
directed primarily at the development of the future
physics researcher, but at using the insights and
skills that physics can provide to enrich and form
the capable citizen. The implications of such a shift
in aims are being thought through in various ways.
One implication is that issues in the history,
philosophy, and social context of the development of
physics ought to feature more strongly in future
curricula.
A third trend, related
to the second, is continuing, and in some western
countries particularly increasing, concern that
students are not being attracted to the study of
physics. So there are some renewed efforts to make
physics more attractive to young people. Some of the
changes mentioned under the second trend above should
also serve this purpose. However, there is also a
need to convey in school and undergraduate study some
of the sense of wonder and excitement that
fundamental research in physics continues to engender
in those working in it or close to it. Thus courses
of study which concentrate on 'basics' and promise to
come to the exciting frontiers in future years are no
longer seen as acceptable. The challenge is to
develop new curricula in which some authentic vision
of work at the frontiers is communicated, and in such
a way that some concepts and methods of working
fundamental to the understanding of physics are
developed through this communication.
A fourth trend is the
rapidly expanding use of the Internet in education.
As can be seen from the above report of activities,
the Commission is trying to explore several ways of
taking full advantage of the possibilities that the
new technology can open up, and in so doing, it is
hoped to learn lessons about future uses. The
immediate prospect is that materials, many old and
some new, can be made freely available so that any
teacher in any school in the world can have access to
them. The issues here are to develop a label that
assures quality of such material, and to find or
produce material for which copyright holders are
willing to give rights with no financial return. The
attraction is particularly strong in the case of
developing countries that have neither the channels
of communication nor the resources to obtain
materials by normal commercial purchase. In many such
countries however, teachers cannot take advantage of
Internet availability because they lack the equipment
to read and download. So a second strand of the
Commission's work here must be to try to establish
and disseminate information about centres in such
countries, where such equipment exists and where
there are physics educators who are willing to
download and copy, at cost, for provision to others
in their immediate region.