Home
Guide Overview
High School Physics Teacher Preparation

Guide To High School Physics Teacher Preparation

Version 2021.1

Description
Benefits
Effective Practices
Assessments
Resources
Evidence

This section provides guidelines and recommendations for physics departments and programs seeking to implement, document, publicize, and support pathways to recruit and educate future high school teachers. Implementing an effective teacher preparation program includes creating an environment within your department that promotes high school teaching as a valid and desirable career option. For guidance on offering a physics or physical science course tailored to the needs of elementary education majors, see the section on Courses for Non-STEM Majors.

Benefits

Creating an effective high school teacher preparation program expands the range of careers for which your department or program prepares students to include high school teaching, a profession in which physics majors have near-certain employment prospects upon graduation. Additional benefits for your department may include improving recruiting and retention, increasing graduation rates, gaining eligibility for funding opportunities, improving learning for undergraduate students within and outside the major, and attracting more well-prepared students from area high schools.

The Cycle of Reflection and Action

Where are you and what are you trying to accomplish?

Who should be involved?

What will you do?

How did it go and what comes next?

To be intentional about change, a department must have a clear understanding of its present situation and a vision for what it would like to become. Our cycle of self-reflection questions will help your department start conversations and structure thinking about how to get from where you are to where you want to be.

The Cycle of Reflection and Action will help you put the EP3 Guide to work for your department.

Learn more about the Cycle of Reflection and Action and how it can help your department.

Effective Practices

Identify and support faculty champions to lead the development and maintenance of a teacher preparation program
1. Identify faculty who can serve as champions by leading the development and maintenance of the teacher preparation program.
  Ensure that champions are positively recognized for this service load in departmental evaluations for, e.g., retention, tenure, promotion, and merit.
  Have faculty with sufficient experience and longevity who serve in this role, so they can effectively advocate for departmental resources and promote the integration of teacher preparation into the department culture.
2. Support champions in understanding and educating students about teacher career paths and licensure requirements.
  Assign champions as advisors or co-advisors to students interested in pursuing teacher certification.
3. Ensure that physics faculty champions initiate and/or maintain collaborations with faculty members in the school of education or its equivalent who are knowledgeable about teacher licensure requirements.
  Ensure that faculty champions remain knowledgeable about teacher licensure requirements through this collaboration.
Evaluate the local landscape with respect to teacher preparation
1. Identify the office that oversees the formal (traditional) teacher certification options for your campus. This may be within the school of education or elsewhere.
  Identify committees or other bodies that make teacher licensure decisions, learn about how they work, and consider becoming involved.
  Identify who on campus is in charge of student-teacher placement and supervision.
  Develop a set of formal and informal contacts you can meet with regularly, ask questions of, and collaborate with.
  Collaborate with faculty in the school of education or its equivalent to pursue funding to enhance teacher education from federal, state, or (with appropriate caution about possible influence), private philanthropic sources. One source of such funding is the
  program.
2. Identify administrators who are supportive of teacher preparation.
  Identify other departments that have teacher education pathways and engaged faculty who support teacher education.
  Identify advisors within your college or institution who advise future teachers.
  Learn about and connect with national organizations that support physics and STEM teacher preparation through funding, helpful professional communities, conferences, and other learning opportunities, e.g.,
  ,
  ,
  , and
  .
3. Learn the language of teacher preparation, e.g.,
  ,
  ,
  ,
  ,
  ,
  ,
  ,
  ,
  , and
  .
  Learn about existing physics teacher licensure programs within your institution.
  Learn about state or local certification requirements and how they have impacted (or may impact) your program; check regularly for changes to these requirements.
  Learn about alternative teacher certification options, e.g., profit-based models and non-profit state “emergency licensure” programs. Investigate when these options might be needed, what their limitations are, what programming you might need to develop to address their missing components, and how these options are perceived by students and by school of education colleagues.
4. Collect local data on student interest in teaching and teacher preparation (see Programmatic Assessments below for details) and/or become aware of national statistics, such as those provided by
  .
  Identify the degree pathways within your department (if any) that lead to the certification or licensure options you’ve identified on your campus, e.g., a physics teaching track or Bachelor of Arts degree with a teaching certification option.
  Identify the number of students (if any) who have completed each pathway in the recent past.
  Identify obstacles that might prevent students from achieving certification, e.g., a lack of existing pathways, increased time to degree, cost, negative perceptions of high school teaching among department members, a lack of awareness of teacher certification options among advisors, and issues with single-field vs. multi-field licensure options. See Programmatic Assessments below for details.
5. Learn about the outcomes, activities, and leaders of any past funded projects at your institution for teacher preparation initiatives, e.g., resulting from
  , the
  ,
  , or
  .
  Determine how your institutional mission or history relates to teacher preparation. For example, was your institution once a
  ?
6. Become familiar with national data on physics teacher shortages and local needs for physics teachers.
  Become familiar with the various career benefits of teaching as a profession. For example,
  provides data on salary, benefits, and life satisfaction of STEM teachers.
  Learn about particular issues that impact your region, depending on whether it is urban or rural, whether it has many high-need districts, what your state licensure requirements are, etc.
  Identify particular needs that local districts have for teachers from
  .
  Determine if
  in physics would be attractive to potential employers or if physics students would need to be able to teach multiple subjects in order to be attractive to area school districts (including rural districts).
Implement a teacher preparation pathway
1. Design the program, individually or with other science departments, and in collaboration with the entity on your campus that oversees teacher licensure, e.g., the school of education or its equivalent.
  Ensure that your department offers a degree track that enables students to meet certification requirements within a four-year degree, either by modifying an existing degree track or by designing a teacher preparation track. This may require negotiation and adjustments from both the physics department and the school of education or equivalent. For examples, see the degree tracks of departments that are both
  sites and
  sites.
  If your department has a separate teaching track, ensure that students can smoothly transition among degree options and that faculty and students perceive this track to be similar in status to other tracks.
  Ensure that the degree option or teaching track is available to all students, including transfer students and late switchers into physics. Understand and help students navigate the financial aid resources that may be available for those who switch too late to graduate in four years.
  Collaborate with the entity on your campus that oversees teacher licensure to accurately communicate to students required components for licensure, e.g., curriculum, field experiences, and testing.
  Learn from existing models for physics and STEM teacher preparation programs such as
  and
  , which include frameworks of practices and strategies for recruiting, preparing, and supporting physics teachers.
  Ensure that students can meet program requirements without adding extra expense or time to graduation.
2. Learn about existing alternative certification or other post-baccalaureate pathways and how to prepare students to pursue these.
  If a post-baccalaureate pathway to certification, such as a Master of Arts in Teaching, already exists on your campus or in your area, work with administrators of this pathway to lower the barriers to entry for your students who decide late in their undergraduate careers to pursue licensure.
3. Establish partnerships with other departments to recruit students who are already pursuing teaching certification in related fields (e.g., mathematics) to (1) add physics certification (e.g., by testing after gaining licensure in a related field) and (2) prepare for physics certification through a physics minor or focused set of courses.
  Provide degree options for current teachers who come back to school for physics licensure and for career changers.
4. Establish a community of practitioners to provide guidance and mentoring on the daily issues teachers face, e.g., through personalized mentoring, regular meetings, events, and/or workshops.
Provide students opportunities to learn physics in ways teachers are expected to teach
1. See sections on Supporting Research-Based Teaching in Your Department and Implementing Research-Based Teaching in Your Classroom for details.
  Give students a formal opportunity to reflect on how these practices affected their learning, e.g., a course for undergraduate teaching assistants, a seminar accompanying early field experiences, or a course in physics pedagogy.
2. Host workshops or events for in-service teachers or alumni and invite future teachers to participate. Such events could include summer classes, professional development workshops, and/or local
  meeting workshops.
  When possible, recruit potential future teachers for jobs that support professional development workshops, such as managing experimental equipment. Ensure that future teachers who take these jobs have time to interact productively with and learn from in-service teachers.
3. Ensure that
  model equitable, inclusive teaching and work effectively with students from diverse backgrounds. See the section on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for details.
  Ensure that
  view struggling students as needing support to reach their full potential, rather than as inherently lacking the intelligence needed to pursue physics.
  Ensure attention is paid to preparing future teachers to educate students who may be different from themselves.
Provide early teaching experiences for students interested in teaching as a career
1. Start a
  or its equivalent. See section on Undergraduate Instructional Assistants for details.
  Ensure that campus tutoring and mentoring opportunities are available for future teachers; partner with the directors of these activities to ensure that students have meaningful experiences and training.
  Promote paid early teaching experiences for those interested in exploring the career, e.g., serving as a teaching assistant or discussion leader or assisting with laboratory preparation.
  Promote informal teaching experiences through outreach activities with the community and visits to K-12 school groups. See the section on Community Engagement and Outreach for details.
  If your department offers a physics course for elementary education majors, provide opportunities for your future teachers to have teaching roles in this course.
2. Offer a 1-credit “introduction to teaching” course that provides an authentic exposure to teaching physics; alternatively, work with the school of education or equivalent to develop such a course.
  Offer an advanced course for students to enhance their mentoring and pedagogical skills or deepen their
  , particularly if you have a
  ; ensure the course counts as a physics elective.
Communicate the value of teaching as a career path
1. Give presentations to faculty and sponsor discussions about teaching as a profession, highlighting the benefits and current data on teacher satisfaction, salaries, and opportunities. For example,
  provides research-based resources including presentations.
  Set aside time in department meetings and retreats to discuss the teacher preparation program, recruiting strategies, student interest, teacher working conditions, and the impact that enthusiastic high school teachers can have on the recruiting of future physics majors. Assign critical readings of reports on high school teaching to structure discussion, e.g., reference 2 in Evidence below.
  Discuss the extreme shortage of high school physics teachers with faculty and your institution’s administration, using local and/or national data.
  Ensure that faculty discuss physics teacher career options with students.
  Include teacher preparation in your department’s strategic and assessment plans; ensure these plans align with the institution’s strategic plan and mission statement and/or with your region’s economic development.
2. Give presentations to students and put up posters in your department about teaching, highlighting the profession’s benefits and current data on teacher satisfaction, salaries, and opportunities. For example,
  provides research-based resources including posters and presentations.
  Identify faculty champions who can talk to students early and often about teaching as a profession.
  Ensure that all faculty use language that is supportive of teaching as a career in courses, in department activities, and when advising or mentoring students.
  Include practicing teachers when highlighting accomplishments of your alumni.
3. Recognize that teacher salaries are much higher and employment opportunities are much better than most physics faculty and students think. Highlight these facts using the
  faculty and student presentations.
  Use
  and
  data to promote teaching as a valued and high-demand career and profession.
  Find local salary and employment data to ensure that you are sharing data relevant to your students.
  Post these data in prominent places throughout the department.
  Invite practicing teachers to talk with students about their careers and why they find teaching physics to be exciting, enjoyable, and/or rewarding.
Promote the teacher preparation program and actively recruit students
1. Discuss career opportunities in teaching and the importance of teaching in all introductory courses, advising sessions, open houses, department-wide student meetings, etc.
  Advertise and promote the program by placing posters in hallways and classrooms, and design flyers for recruiters to use.
  Use promotional materials and the department website to highlight alumni who are teachers, teacher salary data and job prospects, and degree and licensure requirements.
  Present a “paths to certification” talk or workshop; advertise broadly to physics students and other STEM majors.
2. Discuss and/or give presentations in all introductory courses about teaching as a career.
  Ensure that faculty identify and reach out to promising students individually and encourage them to consider teaching, follow up with them at an appropriate interval, and invite them to engage further.
  Recruit future teachers during first-year orientation sessions, highlighting career opportunities and pathways to both students and parents.
  Work to recruit diverse teachers who can serve as role models for the diverse populations they will teach. See the sections on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and Implementing Research-Based Teaching in Your Classroom for recommendations on departmental and teaching practices that are likely to recruit and retain diverse students.
  Develop and share departmental talking points for recruiting teachers, e.g., that teachers have high life satisfaction; salaries are higher than students typically expect and are within the average physics student’s range of acceptable salaries; jobs are easy to get either locally or nationally, as high school physics teachers are among the most sought-after employees; and teachers can pursue other activities during their summers.
  Recommend to students that they try teaching through a program for Undergraduate Instructional Assistants, e.g., a
  or other peer-teaching model.
  Pursue opportunities to support student scholarships for future teachers, e.g., through
  scholarships or fundraising from alumni, friends of the department, or philanthropic organizations.
3. Bring practicing high school teachers to campus to speak with students about why they chose teaching and what they enjoy about their careers.
  Incorporate practicing high school teachers into career events and other programmatic activities attended by all students.
  Ask physics majors if they had a good high school physics teacher; if so, make contact with this person and invite them to campus.
  Structure one-on-one interactions between students and practicing teachers.
  Host a state or regional teacher meeting, such as an
  or
  meeting or regional science teacher gathering, and spend time getting to know local teachers.
  Offer professional development opportunities for in-service teachers that model the use of research-based pedagogy and provide future teachers the opportunity to participate and develop working relationships with in-service teachers.
  Consider identifying a teacher or team of teachers to serve as a “teacher advisory group” to meet regularly with the physics teacher education team, help improve the program, and serve as mentors for future teachers. Offer a stipend or other form of recognition.

Programmatic Assessments

Identify which of the above Effective Practices you are implementing and track the results of implementing them.
Conduct a global assessment of your program with the Physics Teacher Education Program Analysis (PTEPA) rubric (see Resources below) to identify strengths and gaps.
Identify the current licensure pathways available to future teachers, the typical time required for students to achieve licensure, and reasons why students may fail to complete licensure programs. Identify your state’s certification requirements for teaching physics and how elements of your licensure pathway fulfill those requirements. Determine whether there are achievable, sufficiently short, and affordable pathways to physics teacher licensure, and whether students are using these pathways.
Conduct an inventory of STEM content courses that are available and/or required for future physics teachers at your institution. See the section on How to Select and Use Various Assessment Methods in Your Program for guidance on how to conduct inventories. Check that your inventory includes courses that use research-based teaching practices that model how high school physics teachers should teach (see section on Implementing Research-Based Teaching in Your Classroom). Ensure that future physics teachers are given an opportunity to reflect on why such strategies are used, e.g., in a course for Undergraduate Learning Assistants. Determine the level of accomplishment of your program based on the T-TEP report (reference 1 in Evidence below) and associated Policy Statement.
Identify extracurricular mechanisms available for supporting future physics teachers, including student community building, shared workspace, and opportunities to engage with practicing teachers. Track how many students are using each of these mechanisms.
Identify the recruiting mechanisms used by your program or other partners to advertise teacher licensure options.
Identify whether you have faculty champions who can support and maintain your teacher preparation program.
Document reward and recognition mechanisms available for faculty engaged in physics teacher education.
Survey physics and education faculty who are involved with courses that prepare future teachers or who serve as academic advisors for future teachers to solicit feedback about areas of excellence, unmet needs, and ways to improve the teacher preparation program.
Survey students and faculty about whether your department is supportive of teaching careers, and about their perceptions of teaching as a profession, e.g., with the Perceptions of Teaching as a Profession (PTaP) and Perceptions of Teaching as a Profession in Higher Education (PTaP.HE) surveys (see Resources below).
Conduct surveys and exit interviews with students; ask about the departmental culture around teacher preparation, students’ experiences in your program, faculty support, peer attitudes, and difficulties they encountered along the path toward receiving licensure. See the section on How to Select and Use Various Assessment Methods in Your Program for guidance on how to use student feedback forms for formative assessment and how to use surveys, interviews, and focus groups to learn about your students.
Track the number of physics students receiving licensure and the fraction of these students who obtain and retain teaching positions. Compare these numbers to those in other STEM disciplines at your institution and in physics departments at comparable institutions. Note that graduating five high school teachers a year is a significant accomplishment that will enable your department to join PhysTEC's 5+ club. See the section on How to Select and Use Various Assessment Methods in Your Program for guidance on how to track department metrics.
Collect feedback from high school teachers who supervise your students during their student teaching.
Track the pass rate for students who take the Praxis II (the teaching content exam required for licensure in many states) or its equivalent.
Use elements of conceptual tests, traditional exams, and grades to evaluate the conceptual and mathematical understanding of physics of your students, including future teachers.
Evaluate future teachers’ ability to use, repair, and maintain common laboratory equipment used in high school classrooms, e.g., motion sensors, multimeters, oscilloscopes, and computers.
Contact alumni who are teachers and ask about their experiences at your institution and how well your program prepared them for teaching. Include questions about content preparation, pedagogical preparation, and career readiness.
Analyze the demographics of physics majors who participate in your teacher preparation program and those who don’t, likely in partnership with your office of institutional research. Correlate demographics with survey responses and other evaluations to determine how well your teacher preparation program is serving the needs of students in various demographic categories. For guidance on how to collect and analyze demographic data respectfully and protect anonymity, see the Guidelines for Demographic Questions in the supplement on How to Design Surveys, Interviews, and Focus Groups.

Resources

Physics Teacher Education Coalition (PhysTEC): A partnership between
and
to help universities improve their physics teacher education programs through funding opportunities, conferences, research, information, and a national network of institutions engaged in physics teacher preparation.
UTeach: A STEM teacher preparation program replicated across U.S. universities, including financial and implementation support, annual conferences, research, information, and a national network of institutions engaged in STEM teacher preparation.
Get the Facts Out (GFO): An NSF-funded project to disseminate facts about the teaching profession to undergraduate students and faculty in physics, chemistry, and math. GFO supports faculty, advisors, and others in sharing facts about the value of STEM teaching as a profession by providing data; resources such as easily adaptable presentations, posters, and flyers; and opportunities to connect to others engaged in promoting STEM teacher preparation.
AIP Statistical Research Center: A group that regularly collects and analyzes data on high school physics teaching and other topics.
National Science Foundation Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program: A program that offers scholarships to recruit STEM students to become K-12 teachers, with the requirement that scholars commit to teaching in high-need school districts after graduation. The program also hosts an annual conference.

Assessments:

The Physics Teacher Education Program Analysis (PTEPA) rubric: A rubric developed as part of the PhysTEC Thriving Programs study that can be used to evaluate the practices and structures of your physics teacher education program.
The Perceptions of Teaching as a Profession (PTaP) and Perceptions of Teaching as a Profession in Higher Education (PTaP.HE) surveys: Surveys developed by the Get the Facts Out project that can be used to evaluate how your students and faculty perceive teaching as a profession.

Evidence

The evidence to support these practices comes from numerous sources. There is an extensive peer-reviewed literature on teacher education both in physics (references 1 and 2) and more generally (reference 3 and 4). The practices in this section also reflect the experiences of the

and

programs (see Resources above), both of which have produced significant numbers of well-prepared science teachers. These programs draw on effective practices in future (pre-service) teacher education, the practical experience of faculty who have run successful teacher preparation programs, and, most importantly, the experience and knowledge that comes from replicating teacher preparation programs at other institutions. The PhysTEC and UTeach websites include discussions of their respective components, information on physics teacher shortages in the United States, key elements of successful physics teacher preparation programs, and publications related to physics teacher preparation.

D. Meltzer, M. Plisch, and S. Voko (editors), “Transforming the Preparation of Physics Teachers: A Call to Action. A Report by the Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics (T-TEP),” American Physical Society (2012). The Task Force on Teacher Education in Physics subsequently prepared a statement, “Preparing High School Physics Teachers to Build a 21st Century STEM-Capable Workforce.”
S. V. Chasteen, R. E. Scherr, and M. Plisch, “A Study of Thriving Physics Teacher Education Programs: Development of the Physics Teacher Education Program Analysis (PTEPA) Rubric.” American Physical Society (2018).
M. Marder, R. C. Brown, and M. Plisch, “Recruiting Teachers in High-Needs STEM Fields: A Survey of Current Majors and Recent STEM Graduates,” American Physical Society Panel on Public Affairs (POPA) (2017).
L. Darling-Hammond, “Constructing 21st-century teacher education,” Journal of Teacher Education 57(3), 300–314 (2006).

Benefits

Effective Practices

Identify and support faculty champions to lead the development and maintenance of a teacher preparation program

Evaluate the local landscape with respect to teacher preparation

Implement a teacher preparation pathway

Provide students opportunities to learn physics in ways teachers are expected to teach

Provide early teaching experiences for students interested in teaching as a career

Communicate the value of teaching as a career path

Promote the teacher preparation program and actively recruit students

Programmatic Assessments