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Harvard Project Physics, also called Project Physics, was a national curriculum development project to create a secondary school physics education program in the United States during the Cold War era.
The project was active from 1962 to 1972, and produced the Project Physics series of texts, which were used in physics classrooms in the 1970s and 1980s. The project was centered at Harvard University, but drew from schools and educators from across the country. The directors of this project were: F. James Rutherford, project coordinator (and after completion of the project, professor of science education at New York University); Gerald Holton, professor of physics and of the history of science at Harvard University; and Fletcher G. Watson, professor of science education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Project Physics course work was broken into six main subject areas, organized into separate books each called a "Project Physics Text and Handbook" or "Student Guide": [1]
The books presented the material from a historical perspective, with aspects of human interest wrapped into the text. The intent was to build a sophisticated conceptual understanding of physics, while not oversimplifying the curriculum. Frequent references to historical works where concepts were first discovered and debated highlighted the drive to make physics a fundamental search for understanding of the universe. [2]
The course materials also included readers, tests, and other teaching aids. The course readers allowed students to further explore a topic, and lab exercises enabled students to verify that their understanding was confirmed by experimental outcomes. Special lab equipment, brief film loops, films, and a teacher's guide were also developed. [2] The texts and all other aids are now available for free on the Project Physics Collection web site. [1]
Science education is the teaching and learning of science to school children, college students, or adults within the general public. The field of science education includes work in science content, science process, some social science, and some teaching pedagogy. The standards for science education provide expectations for the development of understanding for students through the entire course of their K-12 education and beyond. The traditional subjects included in the standards are physical, life, earth, space, and human sciences.
Experiential education is a philosophy of education that describes the process that occurs between a teacher and student that infuses direct experience with the learning environment and content. This concept is distinct from experiential learning, however experiential learning is a subfield and operates under the methodologies associated with experiential education. The Association for Experiential Education regards experiential education as "a philosophy that informs many methodologies in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people's capacity to contribute to their communities". The Journal of Experiential Education publishes peer-reviewed empirical and theoretical academic research within the field.
Gerald James Holton is a German-born American physicist, historian of science, and educator, whose professional interests also include philosophy of science and the fostering of careers of young men and women. He is Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and professor of the history of science, emeritus, at Harvard University. His contributions range from physical science and its history to their professional and public understanding, from studies on gender problems and ethics in science careers to those on the role of immigrants. These have been acknowledged by an unusually wide spectrum of appointments and honors, from physics to initiatives in education and other national, societal issues, to contributions for which he was selected, as the first scientist, to give the tenth annual Jefferson Lecture that the National Endowment for the Humanities describes as, “the highest honor the federal government confers for distinguished achievement in the humanities”.
Morris Kline was a professor of mathematics, a writer on the history, philosophy, and teaching of mathematics, and also a popularizer of mathematical subjects.
Physics First is an educational program in the United States, that teaches a basic physics course in the ninth grade, rather than the biology course which is more standard in public schools. This course relies on the limited math skills that the students have from pre-algebra and algebra I. With these skills students study a broad subset of the introductory physics canon with an emphasis on topics which can be experienced kinesthetically or without deep mathematical reasoning. Furthermore, teaching physics first is better suited for English Language Learners, who would be overwhelmed by the substantial vocabulary requirements of Biology.
Physics education or physics teaching refers to the education methods currently used to teach physics. The occupation is called physics educator or physics teacher. Physics education research refers to an area of pedagogical research that seeks to improve those methods. Historically, physics has been taught at the high school and college level primarily by the lecture method together with laboratory exercises aimed at verifying concepts taught in the lectures. These concepts are better understood when lectures are accompanied with demonstration, hand-on experiments, and questions that require students to ponder what will happen in an experiment and why. Students who participate in active learning for example with hands-on experiments learn through self-discovery. By trial and error they learn to change their preconceptions about phenomena in physics and discover the underlying concepts. Physics education is part of the broader area of science education.
Chemistry education is the study of teaching and learning chemistry. It is one subset of STEM education or discipline-based education research (DBER). Topics in chemistry education include understanding how students learn chemistry and determining the most efficient methods to teach chemistry. There is a constant need to improve chemistry curricula and learning outcomes based on findings of chemistry education research (CER). Chemistry education can be improved by changing teaching methods and providing appropriate training to chemistry instructors, within many modes, including classroom lectures, demonstrations, and laboratory activities.
Robert Karplus was a theoretical physicist and leader in the field of science education.
The Harvard–MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, or HST, is one of the oldest and largest biomedical engineering and physician-scientist training programs in the United States. It was founded in 1970 and is the longest-standing collaboration between Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Within the program, graduate and medical students are registered with both MIT and Harvard and may work with faculty and affiliated faculty members from both communities. HST is a part of MIT's Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and forms the London Society at Harvard Medical School.
Floyd James Ervin Rutherford was an American science professor, and the founder of AAAS's Project 2061, a long-term effort to reform science education in the United States.
Eklavya is an Indian NGO based in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh working in the field of education. It was registered as an all India in 1982. The organization is named after Eklavya, the protagonist of a story in the Mahabharat, for his determination to learn even in the absence of a teacher.
Edwin Crawford Kemble was an American physicist who made contributions to the theory of quantum mechanics and molecular structure and spectroscopy. During World War II, he was a consultant to the Navy on acoustic detection of submarines and to the Army on Operation Alsos.
Eleanor Ruth Duckworth is a teacher, teacher educator, and psychologist.
The Physical Science Study Committee (PSSC) was inaugurated at a 1956 conference at MIT to review introductory physics education and to design, implement, and monitor improvements. It produced major new physics textbooks, instructional movies, and classroom laboratory materials, which were used by high schools around the world during the 1960s and 1970s and beyond.
The Concord Consortium was founded in 1994 as an educational research and development organization to create large-scale improvements in K-14 teaching and learning through technology.
Physics education research (PER) is a form of discipline-based education research specifically related to the study of the teaching and learning of physics, often with the aim of improving the effectiveness of student learning. PER draws from other disciplines, such as sociology, cognitive science, education and linguistics, and complements them by reflecting the disciplinary knowledge and practices of physics. Approximately eighty-five institutions in the United States conduct research in science and physics education.
The Nuffield Science Teaching Project was a programme to develop a better approach to teaching science in British secondary schools, under the auspices of the Nuffield Foundation. Although not intended as a curriculum, it gave rise to alternative national examinations, and its use of discovery learning was influential in the 1960s and 1970s.
Fletcher G. Watson was an American professor of science education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (1946–77), where he served as the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Education (1966–77). Watson was a founder and co-director of Harvard Project Physics.
Stephen George Brush is a scholar in the field of history of science whose career spanned the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. His research resulted in hundreds of journal articles and over a dozen books.
Richard Francis Gunstone is an Australian academic and researcher. He is the Emeritus Professor of Science and Technology Education at Monash University. He has authored or co-authored 8 books along with various monographs and chapters and has published over a hundred research papers. He has coedited 6 books providing reports of contemporary research in a particular area of science education. His principle research areas include teaching, curriculum, assessment, teacher development, science, physics and engineering.