Physics with fizz

In the ongoing debate about improving teacher quality in a global economy, perhaps nowhere is the need so keenly felt as in the field of Newton and Einstein.

Of the more than 23,000 physics teachers in public and private high schools, just one-third majored in physics or physics education, according to the American Institute of Physics. Each year, the typical teacher education program graduates at most one teacher who specializes in physics; zero is more common.

So what's the deal at Rutgers University?

The New Brunswick, N.J., campus is regularly among the nation's top producers, graduating six to eight physics teachers a year. Almost all of them stick with the profession, and many come back to Rutgers for optional, twice-monthly support sessions long after they've graduated.

The reason is a slender but unyielding force named Eugenia Etkina, and she does it with Rollerblades.

And medicine balls, pulleys, springs, lightbulbs, magnets, mirrors - whatever it takes to prepare her students to teach a subject that, in some classrooms, fails to gain much momentum.

Just be sure not to use that word teach. Or worse, lecture.

"My students, they don't lecture," says Etkina, a professor of science education at Rutgers. "They engage students in observation."

Others are starting to take notice. The journal Science recognized Etkina last month for a physics video website that she developed with former student David Brookes, an assistant professor of physics at Florida International University. And her Rutgers program recently became the first to be endorsed by the Physics Teacher Education Coalition - a network of more than 175 institutions striving to improve physics education.

"It's really a model program," says Monica Plisch, assistant director of education for the American Physical Society.

It all began in Moscow.

Etkina, the daughter of a math professor and a leading space scientist in the former Soviet Union, taught high school physics in Moscow for 13 years. Her students got a good dose of the subject, as they were required to take it for what amounted to 21/2 years over a five-year period. But whenever she ran into her former students after graduation, she noticed something that now forms the core of her philosophy.

"I could see they only remembered things they did on their own, not the things I told them," Etkina says.

She started refining her approach, and continued to do so after leaving Moscow and coming to Rutgers in 1995, eventually writing a textbook with physicist Alan Van Heuvelen.

Etkina's goal is not to have her students, or her students' students, memorize Newton's laws of motion. Rather, she wants them to learn to think like physicists, to learn the practice of science.

The approach is perhaps best embodied in her website, at http://paer.rutgers.edu/pt3/, where at last count there were 242 short videos that illustrate the phenomena of physics. But here's the key: The site does not explain why a ball bounces a certain way, or how an electrical circuit is completed. Instead, it provides questions and tools that direct students how to figure it out, under the guidance of a teacher.

For example, you can measure exactly what happens when Etkina, wearing her Rollerblades, pushes off from a heavier colleague who is also wearing in-line skates. They are stationed in front of a long blackboard that has chalk marks at regular intervals. The student can play the video one frame at a time and, by scrutinizing how fast each person rolls, calculate just what is happening.

Other videos display fluids spurting from leaky bottles, pennies sliding on spinning disks, and laser beams reflecting off mirrors, to name a few.

"These videos aren't teaching science," says former student Chris D'Amato, now teaching in Mount Olive High School in Morris County, N.J. "These videos are an opportunity for students to actually do science."

D'Amato and others frequently check in with Etkina after they graduate from Rutgers, either in person or through the Internet - sharing ideas, honing methods, venting the occasional frustration. Ten high school teachers met her Thursday evening for a three-hour session, including one who had driven 80 miles from upstate New York.

"I consider her to be like my second mom," says Matthew Blackman, a physics teacher at Madison High School, also in Morris County.

Why so few physics teachers? Various reasons have been cited, among them that some people worry physics is too hard, or that those who are good at it gravitate to more lucrative, private-sector professions.

"The word physics has somehow become this 'secrets of the universe known only to a few' thing, which is ridiculous," said Mary Jo Grdina, an associate professor in Drexel University's education school.

Grdina, who taught high school physics for two decades in northern New Jersey, thinks one answer is to promote physics where people least expect it. She is currently developing a physics tour at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, for example, with possible topics including the rotational equilibrium of the museum's Alexander Calder mobile.

Blackman says the problem is that many students still do physics by learning formulas, without gaining a deep appreciation of concepts.

New Jersey has tough standards, requiring aspiring physics teachers to take 30 credits in the actual subject in addition to their education courses. Rutgers adds another layer, because Etkina says plenty of people are good at physics without understanding how to transfer the knowledge. So each of her students must take five courses, from her, in how to teach physics.

Whoops. There's that word again.

Maybe at Rutgers, they should say the courses are in how to "engage students in observation."

Rollerblades required.