Philosophy

Statement of Teaching Philosophy

Introduction: The Necessity of Belief

In conversation, when people learn I’m a physicist they often reply along the lines of, “Oh, I’m not smart enough to do that.” This reply reveals the common belief in the “fixed mindset”: that someone’s success and ability to learn is a product of their innate talents, and that these aptitudes cannot be changed¹. In contrast, I learned from my mother at a young age the simple phrase, “If you believe you can, or if you believe you can’t, you’re right”². In my learning practice, I’ve chosen to believe that I can learn anything I desire. I don’t see myself as having inherently superior cognitive abilities compared to anyone else; rather I see my success as a direct product of personal effort and a “growth mindset.” Because of the growth I have seen in myself, I am convinced that every student has the potential to learn any subject they desire and work at. This strong belief in students’ potential is foundational to my motivation and to my methods for teaching and learning.

To Learn is to Change

Learning, in the physical sciences, is not just about students gaining knowledge, but rather their developing a relationship with truth. Gaining knowledge of a subject is a necessary, but insufficient, part of that process. When a teacher is involved with a student in the craft of learning, each plays an important role. The relationship must be facilitated by a teacher who has a preexisting relationship with the truth of the subject matter. In this sense, they act as an ambassador to the minds and hearts of the students. This relationship must also be received and accepted on the part of the student. I am not describing a passive exercise whereby data and facts are transmitted and absorbed via osmosis. Rather it is a highly active process in which both the student and the teacher come to understand themselves, each other, and the truth of the subject matter.

To receive knowledge, a student must first possess a sufficient desire to seek it and ask the necessary questions. It then involves the personal effort of expanding, rearranging, and potentially discarding one’s knowledge structure to incorporate and integrate new knowledge and understanding. This is a demanding and mentally rigorous process. It requires self-awareness of one’s knowledge structure, and also the imagination to reinvent it ³⁴. Truly, learning is a process of personal change. Furthermore, physics problem-solving skills must be practiced and honed. As a teaching assistant, I instilled a growth mindset in students by explaining that learning physics is not unlike learning to be a proficient pianist⁵. This philosophy of receiving knowledge loosely resembles the constructivist theory of learning; however, I reject conventional relativism when applied to learning physical science.

In favoring an objective physical reality, I also try to illuminate any inconsistencies and misconceptions the students may have. There are many ways I accomplish this, but one effective way is using real data. For example, one high school physics student I tutored could not see that his intuition contradicted Newton’s laws of motion. We tossed his smartphone around in the air, and the onboard accelerometer provided him the necessary insight to successfully reconfigure his knowledge structure. Smartphone sensors and applications⁶ are some of many excellent tools for connecting students with real physical data.

Students and teachers approach a subject with their own experiences and understanding and this prior knowledge may form a structure. As a teacher, I have the responsibility to learn and understand the knowledge structure of my individual students. This may be through concept inventories⁷ or via informal discussion. I then craft learning activities to scaffold their structure throughout its renovation.

Enthusiasm and Questions

Occasionally the people I talk with tell me about their experiences in high school or university physics courses. Most of the time, these were either extremely positive or extremely negative. As I dig deeper, I almost universally find that what people remember the most about their physics teachers is their presence or lack of enthusiasm. While working as an adjunct professor, I tried to convey my passion for physics by introducing students to real-world questions. Physics is not something that humanity has solved and carefully tucked away into textbooks. There are still real unanswered questions⁸ – ones that can capture the imagination of young students. I’ve shown students My Question – the one that carried me into physics and one that still goes unanswered: “Why can sound waves cause a bubble to release a flash of light?” Whether or not my students find their own physics question is outside of my control. My simple hope is that my students will remember my enthusiasm for physics many years later.

Trust and Success

For the process of learning to be successful, it must be founded upon a relationship of trust between students and teachers⁹. Where practical, I learn my students’ names as quickly as possible. I also employ formative and summative assessments with grading practices that are encouraging and redemptive, not punitive. Trust is fostered as I treat students as individuals - with respect, concern, and interest; I recognize that, like them, I am also learning and growing. At the time of my retirement, I will primarily know that I have been successful as a teacher if my students knew that I cared about them, believed in them, and wanted them to grow and succeed, not just in physics but in all areas of their lives.

References Cited:

Dweck, Carol. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House. ↩︎
Attributed to Henry Ford. ↩︎
Odden, Tor Ole, What Does It Mean to “Make Sense” of Physics? The Physics Teacher, 59, 596 (2021). ↩︎
Covey, S. R. (2020). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Simon & Schuster. ↩︎
Shifman, Mikhail, Teaching Physics at School and Colleges arXiv: 1902.03323 (2019). ↩︎
Staacks, S., S Hütz, H. Heinke, and C. Stampfer. (2018). Advanced tools for smartphone-based experiments: phyphox. Physics Education, 53, 045009 (2018). ↩︎
Hestenes, D., Wells, M., and Swackhame, G.. Force concept inventory. The Physics Teacher, 30, 141 (1992). ↩︎
List of unsolved problems in physics. (2021, May 18). In Wikipedia. ↩︎
Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Harvard University Press. ↩︎