Most physics professors have heard of and tried a teaching method beyond the traditional lecture, but one-third of those who have sampled such a technique later abandoned it, according to a new study.
“The surprising thing we found was the high rate of faculty willing to try these things,” said Charles R. Henderson, an associate professor of physics at Western Michigan University and the lead author of “Use of Research-Based Instructional Strategies in Introductory Physics,” which was published in the current issue of Physical Review Special Topics—Physics Education Research.
About 88 percent of the physics faculty in the study knew about “research-based instructional strategies.” Of that group, 82 percent had tried the strategies, wrote Mr. Henderson and his co-authors, Melissa H. Dancy, a physics-education researcher at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Magdalena Niewiadomska-Bugaj, chair of the statistics department at Western Michigan.
The researchers conducted a Web-based survey of 722 faculty members in physics, a discipline that, among the sciences, is often thought to be at the forefront of trying new pedagogies. The sample included faculty at two types of four-year colleges—those that offer graduate degrees in physics and those that do not—as well as at two-year colleges. The survey asked whether the faculty members knew about those strategies, whether they had tried them (and how many), and if they continued to do so.
The researchers listed 24 strategies, each of which seeks to prod students to participate in class more actively than tends to happen in a traditional lecture. The strategies include peer instruction, interactive lecture demonstrations, cooperative group problem solving, and just-in-time teaching. Many of the techniques fall under the general category of the “flipped” classroom, where students learn the material largely outside of class and spend some portion of class time solving problems with their professors or peers, and applying what they learn to new contexts.
Prior research on those methods, the authors wrote, demonstrates that “student conceptual understanding of core physics topics is significantly and consistently higher in courses using active-engagement methods compared to courses using traditional, lecture-based methods.”
Unprepared for Problems
While active-engagement methods may be more effective, they can also be difficult to sustain, the authors found. One out of three of the respondents who had tried those methods later reverted to lecturing.
Their reasons for dropping those methods are still unclear, though Mr. Henderson and Ms. Dancy are conducting follow-up research on the subject. Some faculty members may need help modifying the new methods for their classrooms, Mr. Henderson said.
They also may not be prepared for the intensity of complaints from students, some of whom find the methods unfamiliar and, because of their emphasis on peer learning, less driven by faculty expertise. “They don’t expect to run into problems,” he said of professors. “When it does happen, they’re really unprepared for them.”
His research suggests that awareness of different teaching methods is not the problem, Mr. Henderson said. Those who advocate such active methods could be more frank in describing the difficulties of using them, he said, and faculty members should have more resources available to help them.
A willingness to try different methods is widespread, Mr. Henderson said. While conventional wisdom holds that older professors or those with significant research responsibilities tend to have little appetite for changing their teaching methods, the authors found no evidence to support that notion.
Such results were particularly heartening to Eric Mazur, a professor of physics and applied physics at Harvard University, and a staunch advocate for peer instruction, which was the most popular strategy attempted, according to other studies by Mr. Henderson.
While he would rather have seen more professors sticking with the methods, Mr. Mazur saw the study’s findings as evidence that the teaching of physics has begun to change quite widely.
“Education research has had a phenomenal impact,” he said. “I like to look at the glass as two-thirds full.”
