My Nonprofit Reviews

The AMTA is the best thing that has ever happened not just to my career as a college physics professor, but more importantly to my students' learning and understanding of physics.

I've attended numerous workshops and summer courses over the years sponsored and run by the AMTA, and the teaching approach of Modeling Instruction that the AMTA develops, supports, and works to disseminate has literally transformed not just my teaching, but my (classroom) research (physics education research), and even the way I think about and actually understand, make sense of, and do physics as a PhD professional.

But most importantly, this transformation is not just a feeling I have, but is supported and buttressed by reams of solid evidence that clearly demonstrate my students are learning much much more effectively and deeply than those taught by traditional (i.e. lecture-based) approaches, and even by many active-learning approaches (i.e. workshop physics). This evidence includes their scores on research-based content assessments like the TUG-K and FCI, but also on epistemological surveys like the MPEX. I have written several papers published in the PERC (Physics Education Research Conference) proceedings demonstrating the effectiveness of the modeling instruction approach to teaching physics, both at the introductory level, as well as the upper-division level (please see attached photos of abstract pages).

The several keys to teaching that modeling instruction emphasize are (i) that science is tentative and evolving, (ii) that knowledge & understandings of meaning are constructed and shared through dialogue, (iii) that a relatively small set of reasonably simple models can be used to account for many physics phenomena, and (iv) that a coordinated set of multiple different representations (pictures, words, diagrams, graphs, symbols, math, numbers) help students build solid internal knowledge networks for robust understanding.

Based on (i) and (ii), the classroom is continually hands-on, and heads-on, and is structured to start with gathering data (from carefully structured/designed exploratory laboratory experiences/experiments), from which patterns are extracted (i.e. models), that are discussed and agreed upon by the entire class (through small group and whole-class dialogue), and then this consensus is applied to familiar and novel situations (i.e. problem solving) to further develop and refine the understanding of meaning. Students are constantly in (carefully structured) dialogue with each other to build a class-wide understanding of material through negotiations of understanding and applications of meaning. The depth of their learning is examined through research-based assessments.

Lastly, the AMTA is invaluable as a professional association that brings like-minded individuals together to encourage, nurture and support one another, the next generation, and the development and deployment of materials and curriculum that fundamentally transform the utility and effectiveness of physics instruction at all levels, (so far :^) from middle school to high school to community college to four year college and university instruction.