(Posted 7-27-00)
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
News Service Contact:  Natasha Ashe, 336-334-5371

$1.6 MILLION UNCG GRANT BRINGS N.C. PHYSICS TEACHERS
TOGETHER AND MAY REVEAL HOW AND WHY PEOPLE LEARN
 
GREENSBORO — Larry Lohr doesn’t feel alone anymore. The Guilford County physics teacher not only learned techniques to take back to his classroom during the Extended Physics Community (EPC) session at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, but the best part of the program, he said was meeting and interacting with others in his profession.

Lohr, a teacher at Southeast Guilford High School, was among 14 high school teachers from Alamance, Catawba, Chatham, Guilford, Forsyth, Wake, Watauga and Wilkes counties who participated in the first group of a three-week physics program funded with a $1.6 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Participants commit to the program for two years, which includes two three-week summer sessions and six two-day workshops during the two years. A second group of teachers will begin next summer and the process will begin again with the goal of reaching 168 teachers across the state. Later sites will include UNC-Wilmington, Appalachian State University and an undetermined location in eastern North Carolina.

UNCG professors Dr. Gerald Meisner and Dr. Harol Hoffman identified the need to establish EPC in North Carolina. The professors worked diligently to form the collaborative effort among UNCG, North Carolina A&T State University, Appalachian State University, the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, a commercial web development company, webslingerZ, Inc. of Carrboro, and a number of school systems to initiate a statewide comprehensive physics and physical science program for the state's teachers.

But Meisner, the principal project director, said the program, which solely focuses on physics and physical science, may also reveal how and why people learn. The UNCG physics professor said the program's data will be shared with researchers and psychologists as a basis to understand how people learn in physical sciences.

"Understanding how people learn in the physical sciences is not based on wild theory, but on hard data," Meisner said. "We used to think that in order to learn, a student needed an authority to transmit information, but we now know that access to information is not the same as learning. Guiding students into constructing their own knowledge leads to wonderful, documented results. These results can then be applied to any discipline to build understanding, not just to physics."
But for now, the most immediate result has been the establishment of a community of physicists and physics educators throughout North Carolina to form a type of "support system" among them.

"Most schools only have one physics teacher, so it's hard to talk shop when you're the only one teaching physics," said Lohr, who made the switch from teaching biology to physics two years ago. "Being able to talk to teachers in the same profession about problems or techniques is going to be extremely beneficial. I look forward to the continued relationship building and keeping in touch with these folks."

Patty Blanton, one of two lead workshop instructors, says participants of the program not only get to know one another, but also learn from one another.

"Each participant has a different level of experience they share," says the 32-year retired physics teacher from Watauga County whose replacement, Tom Brown, is also taking part in the workshops. "This grant is to ensure teachers in the state have a support system and contact so there won't be feelings of isolation."

The World Wide Web will be the electronic backbone for this project through e-mail, point-to-point instant messaging, chat room, and group desktop video conferencing, which will augment personal, classroom interactions by and with lead teachers throughout the state.

Michael Turner, a physics teacher at Weaver Education Center, came to UNCG in the spring as a lead workshop instructor. The veteran physics instructor said he's glad to hear teachers are finding the program beneficial. But Turner said EPC also provides teachers an opportunity to strengthen physics content knowledge in the classroom, where so many teachers are already teaching out-of-field.

"Studies indicate that many students don't score well on physics pretest," Turner said. "Those same studies also show that after students have taken a traditional lecture physics class, many of them still don't know much more than they did when they started. We expect that as a result of the workshop, which uses pedagogical methods based on 10 years of research, teachers will be able to guide their students in attaining a better understanding of physics concepts."
 
The teachers learn using a process developed by two lead researchers at Arizona State University called the Model Method, which teaches a hands-on approach to constructing models through experimentation, collecting and analyzing data and presenting results in a way students understand.

 "This has been an amazing experience. Many of us are life long learners which makes us better teachers," said Forsyth County teacher Terry McMurray. "These workshops enhance what I already know, but the focus is on student learning. Students' minds have to be engaged so that they can understand. This just might be the missing link so we can help our students learn."

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