Our goals are:
1) to prepare leaders and establish teacher ownership of the modeling method,
2) to strengthen the communication, collaboration and mutual support system
for high school teachers. This involves organizing and strengthening the
local physics alliances in the communities of our teachers,
3) to establish and strengthen institutional
mechanisms to promote lifelong professional development for h.s. physics
teachers. This includes linking our teachers with university
professors in such a way that our teachers can teach the modeling method
locally after they've implemented it, via a graduate level course or
workshop,
4) to infuse computers and electronic networks into the h.s. physics classrooms.
Now for the important part. Here are some lessons we've learned about
teacher leadership:
* The teacher is the key to educational reform. Only the scientific
disciplines can foster the professional development and support that
teachers need to be effective. Therefore teachers must be integrated into
the scientific community of their disciplines.
* The most talented teachers are an untapped resource for educational
reform. With proper support from their professional community they can do
more for reform than anyone else, because they are informed stakeholders
closest to this problem.
* There needs to be an infrastructure for continuous support and
professional development of teachers. This includes maintaining channels
for contact with their peers and the education research community. It
includes opportunities for them to collaborate on improving instruction in
the classroom. A major deficiency in federal funding is that insufficient
attention is paid to this professional infrastructure.
* Master high school science teachers need to be involved in teaching
university courses for inservice and preservice science teachers, because
they are more aware of the critical issues than most university professors.
(David Hestenes, the principal investigator of this project, wrote the
above paragraph.)
Cheers,
Jane Jackson, Director, Modeling Workshop Project
Jane Jackson (Prof. of Physics, Scottsdale Comm. College--on leave)
Dept.of Physics, Box 871504, Arizona State Univ.,Tempe AZ 85287-1504.
jane.jackson@asu.edu (602)965-8438 FAX:965-7331
Modeling Workshop Project: http://modeling.la.asu.edu/modeling.html
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