Reinders Duit
IPN,Leibniz-Institute for Science Education, University of Kiel 

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Physics Education Research – Indispensable for Improving Teaching and Learning

Disappointing results of international monitoring studies like TIMSS and PISA have fuelled another general debate on the need for a sufficient level of scientific literacy and the necessity to improve the quality of science instruction in school. Physics is the domain that is greeted with the lowest interest of students among the sciences. It is further viewed as a difficult, even incomprehensible subject by many students. A brief overview of the actual state of physics education research on teaching and learning will be provided. It will be argued that improvement of students’ understanding of key physics concepts and familiarity with recent views of the nature of physics may only be expected if critical analyses of physics content structure and empirical studies on teaching and learning are intimately linked.

Lillian C. McDermott
Department of Physics, University of Washington, USA

Director of the Physics Education Group

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PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCH:  THE KEY TO IMPROVING STUDENT LEARNING FROM THE INTRODUCTORY TO THE GRADUATE LEVEL

Research on the learning and teaching of physics is an efficient means for achieving cumulative improvement in student learning. Results from systematic studies indicate that university students from the introductory to the graduate level often have similar conceptual and reasoning difficulties. To ensure that strategies developed to address these difficulties in one setting will also work at other institutions, teaching must be treated as an applied science as well as an art. As in any science, the procedures used and the results obtained must be carefully documented so that they can be replicated. Because both a deep knowledge of the subject and ready accessibility to students are required, discipline-based education research must be conducted by scientists in science departments. Examples will illustrate how findings from research have been used to guide instruction that has proved effective in introductory physics courses, in the preparation of graduate students as teaching assistants for these courses, and in the professional development of K-12 teachers. There will also be a brief descriptiion of how a research-oriented physics department has gradually come to recognize physics education research as an appropriate field for scholarly inquiry by physics faculty.

Matko Milin
Faculty of Science,
University of Zagreb,
Croatia

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EXOTIC SHAPES OF ATOMIC NUCLEI

A standard, textbook visualisation of an atomic nucleus is an almost perfect sphere of nuclear matter, showing no or little deformation. In contrast to such a simplified picture, recent experiments give proofs for a variety of different shapes, often even of the same nucleus. The outreach to nuclei with the extreme neutron to proton ratios reveals completely new phenomena and shows that a departure from spherical symmetry is a rule rather than exception for nuclei far from stability.

New experimental results on neutron skins and halos, shape coexistence, nuclear clusters and molecules, super- and hyper-deformations and other related topics will be shown in the lecture, together with discussion of our present theoretical understanding of the nuclear structure.

Petar Pervan,
Institute of Physics,
Croatia

Senior scientist and assistant director of the Institute of Physics in Zagreb. His main research interests are in the field of experimental surface physics and supported nano structures. He was involved in many different projects that promote use of information technology in education and actively uses e-learning in his university courses. He is passionate promoter of science.

POPULAR PHYSICS; WHY AND HOW WE DO IT?

Facing a widespread physics illiteracy in our society and decline in the number of students enrolling physics education at a university level, the Institute of Physics (Zagreb) consistently supports various activities in promoting physics and natural sciences in general. Recently, science communication and popularisation became officially a part of the Institute mission. In this lecture I will present our experience in making science attractive to students at almost all educational levels.

Monika Plisch,
Center for Nanoscale Systems, Cornell University

Director of Educational Programs, Center for Nanoscale Systems and instructor in School of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University

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INTRODUCING NANOSCIENCE IN THE PHYSICS CLASSROOM

The Center for Nanoscale Systems at Cornell University has developed programs to introduce physics teachers and students to nanoscience. College-level efforts include the development of a new lecture and laboratory course on nanoscience for first-year applied physics students. Pre-college efforts include teacher training, curriculum development, and an equipment lending library. Successful strategies at both levels will be discussed, and the results of program evaluation efforts will be summarized.

Norman Reid
Professor of Science Education
Director
The Centre for Science Education
University of Glasgow

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TEACHING AND LEARNING PHYSICS SUCCESSFULLY
(WHAT DOES SCIENCE EDUCATION RESEARCH TELL US?)

Physics education at both school and university has a vital role to play in developing any society today in that we need populations who understand the main ideas of physics and can see its important place in any modern society. The only place where the whole population can be educated in the key underpinning ideas of physics is the secondary school (ages 12-18). Where this is successful, university physics departments can attract quality applicants who have enthusiasm and sound knowledge on to which the higher levels of physics understandings c an be built.....> full text

Laurence Viennot,
University Denis Diderot,
Paris, France

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ATTRACTING STUDENTS TOWARD PHYSICS:
A MATTER OF TOPIC?

Physics’ attractiveness is a major concern in these days of decreasing students’ numbers. The goal of presenting an updated view of physics is all the more seen as crucial, and, more generally, finding attracting topics is central in our attempts to renew physics teaching. On the other hand, giving an appropriate idea of science also means to illustrate the central part of the search for consistency in the construction of physical theories.
To which extent are these two goals compatible? Through a few examples of supposedly attractive or ordinary topics, the role of teaching sequences implying a search for coherence and for links between topics will be examined. Students and teachers’ appreciations in this respect will be discussed in terms of the feasibility of such sequences and of the intellectual satisfaction that they can generate.

George N. Vlahakis,
Institute for Neohellenic Research / National Hellenic Research Foundation,
Athens Greece

Dr. Vlahakis is fellow researcher of the Institute for National Hellenic
Research Foundation. He teaches History of Philosophy and Science in Greece from the
antiquity to the 20th century in the Hellenic Open University and is
secretary of the History of Physics Committee / European Physical Society.

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David Wark
Imperial College London,
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory

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SOLAR NEUTRINOS: MYSTERIOUS MESSENGERS FROM THE HEART OF THE SUN

Neutrinos are the ghosts of particle physics - they lack electric
charge, and therefore can penetrate through light-years of solid matter. This makes them an excellent probe of places where light cannot go, however it also makes their detection a staggering challenge. For over thirty years physicists have been observing neutrinos from our Sun, and the flux observed has consistently been far below that predicted by our best understanding of how the sun works. The talk will discuss the
history of the field, including the early results for which aymond
Davis and Masatoshi Koshiba were awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics, emphasize the recent results from the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, and then discuss the even more recent results from the KamLAND experiment. These results have demonstrated that the extremely difficult observations of these elusive particles require us to rethink our models of particle physics, and even have implications for our
understanding of the Universe as a whole.