Student's performance is declining in physics and many people are saying it might be because teachers are not good enough. Then could this be as a result of poor academic and professional qualification of physics teachers?
@Aina,
Just to play with your words.
"teachers are not good enough" : Do you mean good enough in physics or good enough in didactic. Both features are academic.
But my opinion is, the main problem is the didactic quality of the lecturer, the second problem is the really difficult task to study physics, because of the interdisciplinary but thorough knowledges the student have to acquire. I mean physics, mathematics, chemistry and often biology for biophysics.
During my students time about 50-60% of the "physics" beginners dropped the physics studies and changed to an "easier" field.
I think being good in a field, and being a good teacher, are different things. You can be highly qualified as a Physicist, but if you can't relate to your students and make them understand what you know, you will be a poor teacher.
I suggest to read everything regarding Professor Richard P. Feynemann, you can find a good example of a great physics teacher.
I propose the alleged decline in performance on assessments that measure a student's understanding of physics has more to do with our culture than the quality of teaching. Students do not experience the natural world as directly as they once did. They don't need to understand logarithms or trigonometry as deeply as previous generations, because computers do the work for them.
There should be a correlation. In developing countries many people who were teaching physics were not truly qualified physics teachers. We have engineers and others in physics class; these people were not trained teachers and so they may not properly understand the process of learning. True, they may have what we call knowledge of the subject matter but other things that should help the students to learn and have good retention is missing because the teacher is not a qualified physics teacher. classroom management, motivation, evaluation etc are necessary "tools"a physics teacher must equipped himself with in each lesson if his student will learn and retain it. All these are part of what any teacher should know during training. What if someone is teaching without teaching qualification? There are so many other things in being a trained teacher that we need to know.
As Moses mention there are No relation between be a good teacher and be a HQT .This Not only in Physics, but in all material to teach. If you want be a HQT you have to take a test, but it does not test your ability to transmitte the topic, your students' academic performance in physics. This is just a paper that said that you have some knoglege about education and the topic (s) you would like teach. Be a good teacher is has the ability to do basic requirement for disseminating knowledge. Be a good teacher is has a good teacher-students approch to interest them, control emotions of class, have a a good lesson plan, and other thing as Moses mentions. Be a good teacher is not about qualification or students grades, these do not measure there knowlege. These only measure the ability of the student to remember thing (but not about how many time he/she will remember it.) these is not learn. On of our problem is that the students what an easy and fast money. Our culture is focuses on money.
The original question was: Is there any correlation between teachers' qualification and students' academic performance in physics? Generally, we suppose yes, there should be something relation but many of examples confute it. If we had have a chance to measure this relation in the farme of a representative research we would have found conclusive data.
Another aspect is that, if there is no relation between the two variable why we target to train highly qualified good teachers???
To teach someone, the teacher should be knowledgeable enough... as benchmark to authenticate the knowledge, "educational qualification" is earmarked as BAR.
This is to a great extent followed worldwide and is quite accepted....Physics
- Higher Secondary Level to Graduation - Masters
@Aina,
Just to play with your words.
"teachers are not good enough" : Do you mean good enough in physics or good enough in didactic. Both features are academic.
But my opinion is, the main problem is the didactic quality of the lecturer, the second problem is the really difficult task to study physics, because of the interdisciplinary but thorough knowledges the student have to acquire. I mean physics, mathematics, chemistry and often biology for biophysics.
During my students time about 50-60% of the "physics" beginners dropped the physics studies and changed to an "easier" field.
@Aina Kola et al., I believe that teachers have to possess the content knowledge and have the expertise on Learning. From my research, Teacher needs to:
1) Be well prepared for class.
2) Demonstrate enthusiasm for teaching.
3) Present content in a logical manner
4) Have thorough knowledge of the course.
5) Increase student’s appreciation for subject.
6) Make clear to students amount of time needed to understand complex material.
7) Clearly communicate the minimum time required for adequate class preparation
8) Encourage students to set challenging goals
9) Periodically discuss how class is doing
10) Return tests and written work within a reasonable time
11) Encourage students to challenge ideas presented in class
12) Use a variety of teaching techniques
13) Encourage students to participate in planning learning activities
14) Use interesting learning activities
Hi,
I think these papers could help in this discussion:
Hill, H. C., Rowan, B., & Ball, D. L. (2005). Effects of teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching on student achievement. American educational research journal, 42(2), 371-406.
Darling-Hammond, L., & Youngs, P. (2002). Defining" highly qualified teachers": What does" scientifically-based research" actually tell us?. Educational Researcher, 13-25.
Wayne, A. J., & Youngs, P. (2003). Teacher characteristics and student achievement gains: A review. Review of Educational research, 73(1), 89-122.
Ramsden, P., & Moses, I. (1992). Associations between research and teaching in Australian higher education. Higher Education, 23(3), 273-295.
Regards
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