Over the past year and a half I have been writing a handbook for novice physics teachers. The book is…
Cognitive Psychology and Initial Teacher Education
“The question is not whether these experts are well trained. It is whether their world is predictable.” Daniel Kahneman, Thinking…
James Clerk Maxwell and the Second Great Unification in Physics
Newton unified physics and astronomy: this was the first great unification in physics. Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism – the…
A Map of Physics
In 1966 Richard Feynman gave an interview about teaching physics. He described a problem with physics teaching: often students did…
Better than Wrong
Science exams are typically examples of the difficulty model of assessment where answers are right or wrong (see Christodoulou, Making…
Japanese Physics Textbook – Model Answers
In my last post, I translated (using Google Translate) the first page of a Japanese high school physics textbook (here).…
Textbooks from High Performing Jurisdictions: Japan
Japanese students do well on the Pisa tests, and they use textbooks. So I bought a Japanese high school…
Using Physics Questions to Build Problem Solving, Literacy and Knowledge.
A few weeks ago I observed an English teacher pull a sentence apart. A line from Romeo and Juliette was…
If you want it here, don’t put it there.
Wall displays, formula sheets and placemats… If you want students to commit knowledge to long-term memory, you shouldn’t put it…
When knowledge is wrong…
Babies are born knowing physics. They express surprise when an object appears to be suspended in mid-air or pass through…
Reading for Learning 