Analysis of Praxis physics subject assessment examinees and performance: Who are our prospective physics teachers?

Abstract

A generally agreed upon tenant of the physics teaching community is the centrality of subject-specific expertise in effective teaching. However, studies which assess the content knowledge of incoming K-12 physics teachers in the U.S. have not yet been reported. Similarly lacking are studies on if or how the demographic makeup of aspiring physics educators is different from previously reported analyses of the actual high school physics teaching workforce. Here we present findings about the demographics and subject knowledge of prospective high school physics teachers using data from Praxis physics subject assessments administered between 2006 and 2016. Our analysis reveals significant variations in exam participation and performance between men and women, as well as those with different undergraduate majors and academic performance over the past decade. Findings from this work inform understandings and decisions about the quality, recruitment, and preparation of the high school physics teaching workforce.

What Prospective Chemistry Teachers Know about Chemistry: An Analysis of Praxis Chemistry Subject Assessment Category Performance

“…However, education majors continue to perform at the level of non-STEM majors in all of the discipline-specific content categories, which is consistent with findings from other reported STEM Praxis Subject Assessment analyses. 35,36 More synergistic relationships between colleges of education and disciplinary departments may be key in ensuring that this population of majors, who are the most likely to pursue teaching careers, are at least as prepared as disciplinary majors in their content area. Efforts to house chemistry education majors in chemistry departments, for example, may ensure that these students are held to the same academic standards as disciplinary majors.…”

Teacher Knowledge Structure of Physics Teachers

“…It is also a premise of teachers' professional development and it is also necessary condition for teachers to have effective teaching. The opinions and points of scholars at home and abroad on the structure of teachers' knowledge are not exactly the same, but they normally think that there should be at least three parts in the structure: professional knowledge, basic knowledge of science and culture and knowledge of pedagogy and psychology [10,11].…”

Diagnosing the current state of out-of-field teaching in high school science and mathematics

“…While ‘science’ is often considered a homogenous subject area with respect to staffing, many science teachers and disciplinary experts would likely agree that ‘science’ in more accurately comprised of several distinct disciplines (e.g., biology, chemistry, physics). Apart from differences in foci between disciplines (e.g., living organisms in biology, matter in chemistry), knowledge construction is also reportedly unique to each subject [19,20], such that training in one science discipline is unlikely to qualify one to teach across others [21, 22]. An evaluation of out-of-field teaching across science subjects is needed to inform discipline-specific efforts.…”