No abstract

Advocacy is an emergent dimension of teacher leadership, given its growing importance in shaping policy and facilitating reform efforts in American K-12 education. In 2014, the National Academies called for advancing advocacy-based activities and leadership among K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers, who are presently understudied. The purpose of this embedded single-case case study was to explore STEM teachers’ development of self-efficacy in advocacy for STEM education. Contextualizing the case, participants consisted of 11 STEM teacher leaders who were part of the STEM Teacher Ambassadors (STA) program, a year-long advocacy-focused leadership development fellowship program, jointly sponsored by the National Science Teaching Association and National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Employing case study research methodology, primary data were collected using semi-structured interviews, while secondary data were sourced via focus group interview and documents to triangulate interview data. Utterances (i.e., participant statements, groups of statements, or segments of statements) from transcribed data were coded a priori and analyzed via four constructs of self-efficacy theory: enactive master experiences, vicarious experiences, verbal persuasion, and emotional arousal. Results revealed 157 utterances coded to self-efficacy building within STEM education advocacy. Findings suggest that STEM teacher leaders’ participation in professional development programs that specifically focus on development of policy knowledge and advocacy activities help to develop and sustain STEM teacher leaders’ advocacy self-efficacy, given that participating teachers have numerous opportunities to fully engage in mastery experiences in STEM education advocacy. Implications and recommendations for policy and suggestions for further studies are discussed.

Recent reports from federal agencies and legislation call for explicit avenues to incorporate K–12 STEM master teacher voice into the policy space. National initiatives, federal legislation, and teacher recognition programs have sought to identify K–12 STEM master teachers and harness their potential. These efforts warrant a conceptual framework to quantify attributes of K–12 STEM master teachers, to foster pathways for the development of current and future leaders. Using a sample of 10 individuals from two extant programs of K–12 STEM master teachers (Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellowship and Presidential Awards for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching), data from their career trajectories (sourced from Curriculum Vitae) were sequenced to construct and confirm the STEM Master Teacher (STEMMaTe) conceptual framework. This framework may be used to guide programmatic development to increase national capacity for K–12 STEM master teachers. Recommendations are discussed for the creation of pathways to develop STEM master teachers and increase their participation in the broader education system.

The velocity selector is a classic first-year physics problem that demonstrates the influence of perpendicular electric and magnetic fields on a charged particle.1 Traditionally textbooks introduce this problem in the context of balanced forces, often asking for field strengths that would allow a charged particle, with a specific target velocity, to pass through the field region with constant velocity2–4 While this analysis is quite useful from a pedagogical perspective, especially for checking to see if students remember their Newtonian mechanics from first semester, it is just one meaningful application of the velocity selector. In fact, a recent conversation with the author's physics class yielded an important question: What is the shape of a particle's path whose initial velocity does not match the target velocity? While the class was in agreement that the path would be “curved,” they were at a loss for more detail. Solving this problem analytically can be difficult, especially for introductory physics students, given that the direction and magnitude of the magnetic force (and by extension, the particle's acceleration) change in time.

No abstract

In an ideal world, education policy and practice would exist as parts of a coherent system. Effective practice would inform policy and that policy would, in turn, promote the tenets of effective practice at the local, state, and national levels. Policymakers and practitioners would collaborate and, by extension, have familiarity and respect for one another’s perspective. Unfortunately, our current education system is a far cry from the ideal, a fact that we as practitioners know all too well.

Physics education research has a tradition of studying problem solving, exploring themes such as physical intuition and differences between expert and novice problem solvers. However, most of this work has focused on traditional, or well-structured, problems, similar to what might appear in a textbook. Less work has been done with open-ended, or ill-structured, problems, similar to the types of problems students might face in their professional lives. Given the national discourse on educational system reform aligned with 21st century skills, including problem solving, it is critical to provide educational experiences that help students learn to solve all types of problems, including ill-structured problems.