How do we know if we are doing a good job in physics teaching?Robert Ehrlich

Citation: American Journal of Physics 70, 24 (2002); doi: 10.1119/1.1424267 View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1119/1.1424267 View Table of Contents: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aapt/journal/ajp/70/1?ver=pdfcov Published by the American Association of Physics Teachers Articles you may be interested in How We Think About And Prepare To Teach Physics AIP Conf. Proc. 790, 209 (2005); 10.1063/1.2084738 Comment on “How do we know if we are doing a good job in physics teaching?,” by Robert Ehrlich [Am. J. Phys.70 (1), 24–29 (2002)] Am. J. Phys. 70, 1058 (2002); 10.1119/1.1495411 Comment on “How do we know if we are doing a good job in physics teaching?,” by Robert Ehrlich [Am. J. Phys.70 (1), 24–29 (2002)] Am. J. Phys. 70, 471 (2002); 10.1119/1.1463742 What and how to teach? Phys. Teach. 39, 520 (2001); 10.1119/1.1482559 What Jamaican students think about physics and how we are adapting AIP Conf. Proc. 399, 827 (1997); 10.1063/1.53184

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How do we know if we are doing a good job in physics teaching?Robert EhrlichPhysics Department, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia 22030

~Received 8 August 2001; accepted 3 October 2001!

Whether it be at the level of the individual, the academic department, or the entire physics teachingprofession, nearly all of us want to do a good job. But how can we know if we are succeeding? Towhat extent can we trust traditional measures of excellence in teaching, and what alternativemeasures resting on different—perhaps even unfashionable—assumptions might weconsider? ©2002 American Association of Physics Teachers.

@DOI: 10.1119/1.1424267#

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THE VALUE OF STUDENT EVALUATIONS

Note: This article is based on a talk that was deliveredthe AAPT summer meeting in Rochester upon receiving2001 AAPT Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaing.

The topic for this talk was prompted by the fact that tday before I received the letter notifying me that I had begiven the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Awardhad just received last semester’s student evaluationsseemed to me that unless there were some evidence ocellence in my teaching, I would, in good conscience, hato decline the award. To my chagrin I had received in orecitation section of our pre-med physics course, the wstudent evaluations I ever got. One student even wrote onform that I should be fired!

Interestingly, the students in my other recitation of tsame pre-med physics course~scheduled immediately aftethe first one! gave me some of the highest ratings I evreceived, and yet as far as I was concerned I had doneactly the same job in both sections. I was particularly intested to see how I would be evaluated in these recitasections, because I had reverted to a form of instructionI had not used in quite a while. Namely, I treated the tsections as literal recitations, where students would sohomework on the blackboard, and explain their solutionsthe rest of the class. I would then comment on the studwork, either praising it, or through questioning, uncoverrors and misunderstandings. I would also sometimes radditional questions that went beyond the actual wordingthe particular problem, in an attempt to encourage studenthink about the generality or limitations of their solution.

Sometimes it happened that students whose written wat the board was flawless were unable to answer the simquestion about what they had written. In such cases,questions were probably particularly resented, and sotimes they were greeted with either stony silencemumbled nonsequiturs from students. Although I usuatried to avoid appearing to ‘‘hound’’ a student with follow-uquestions when it was clear they were floundering, somtimes I couldn’t resist—especially when a student appeato bluff with an answer based entirely on random guesswoOften my follow-up questions would make it clear to bothe student and the rest of the class that they had a verygrasp of the material. My feeble attempts at humor in sucases may well have been misinterpreted as ridicule byunfortunate student.

At one point I did lamely suggest to my recitation studethat they should think of me as their drill instructor, who

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job it was to get them into shape physics-wise. Apparenhowever, some students would have preferred not to htheir lack of knowledge put on display before their clasmates, and were looking for more of a hand-holder thadrill sergeant. I still am uncertain why my supposedly idetical approach in the two recitation sections led to drasticadifferent student ratings—one class loving it and the othating it.

I can only speculate that the classroom is a chaosystem—no news there! In a chaotic system, small asubtle changes in the initial conditions—in this case theture of the instructor’s comments or the state of mind ofstudents or instructor—lead to large differences in the sof the system. Anyway, the bottom line is that the studevaluations didn’t tell me very much about the success of‘‘strongly interacting’’ system for conducting the recitationonly that in one case the strongly interacting force wastractive, and in the other case it was repulsive. Regardlesthe ratings, my gut instinct was that my approach wsuccessful—even if some students hated it—and I plancontinue using it, but with greater attention to the wordingmy comments. I don’t cite this anecdote because I think sdent evaluations are worthless, but I do think they need totaken with a very large grain of salt.

WHAT DO OUR STUDENTS LEARN?

The obvious place to look for a validation of the job ware doing in the classroom would seem to be in the permance of our students as a result of instruction in our clasAs Joe Redish has pointed out, however, ‘‘many physics fulty come away from teaching introductory physics deedismayed at how little the majority of their students halearned.’’1 Even among those students who do perform won problem-based exams, there often seems to be littlein conceptual understanding. Joe and others in the PhyEducation Research community have shown that with trational instruction, there is minimal gain in conceptual undstanding, as measured for example by normalized gainsthe Force Concept Inventory~FCI! test. Moreover, RichardHake has shown that in classes having a strong compone‘‘interactive engagement’’~IE!, roughly twice the normalizedgain can be achieved without any deleterious effectsproblem-solving ability.2 These results have been givengreat deal of attention in recent years, and justifiablyTaken at face value they would seem to imply that traditioinstruction, that is, lecturing, is of very little value, whilinstruction that interactively engages students yields mgreater gains.

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Although I strongly believe in the value of interactiveengaging my students, and I would do it regardlesswhether it could be proven to have actual value in improvunderstanding, I am unwilling to take the preceding claimsface value for at least four reasons. First, I am not convinthat the claim of greater conceptual understanding gainsthe FCI test in IE classes may not be due in part to soamount of ‘‘teaching to the test.’’ Second, the IE versnon-IE comparison is hardly a double blind one, becaboth Hake and the course instructor knew both the categthe course is being placed into~IE or non-IE!, as well as theFCI gain for that class.

Third, and most important of all, the IE versus non-classification is a blurry one. There is clearly a continuumthe ‘‘interactive engagement’’ or IE scale that ranges frolecturing with zero student involvement, all the way to sdent peer discussion groups with little if any lecturing. Morover, good lecturers may, through a judicious use of pdiscussion a` la Mazur,3 engage their students to a greadegree than teachers who do no lecturing. In fact, accordto Joe Redish, some of the largest FCI gains he hasobserved were in a large~though highly interactive! lectureclass.4 In short, contrary to the rhetoric of some, we shounot equate instruction via lecture mode to passive studexperiences. As David Bligh has shown in ‘‘What’s the Uof Lectures?,’’ lecturing when done properly, can engastudents.5 Finally, I would be more willing to accept that IEclasses show greater conceptual gains if those gainsshown to be of value in follow-on courses, specificallythey led not only to greater student entre in the major,more importantly to higher numbers of physics graduate

Regardless of my skeptical comments about taking coparisons between IE and non-IE courses at face value, Ias I noted previously, applaud efforts to strive for greastudent engagement—though I prefer doing it within toverall lecture format, which as I noted can be quite intertive. In addition, I agree that we need to place greater ephasis on deep conceptual understanding without commising our student’s problem-solving skills.

STUDENT ATTITUDES TOWARD PHYSICS

To assess the job we are doing as physics teachers,lieve that we need to consider what effect we are havingour students, both in terms of their understanding of the sject as well as their attitudes toward it.

For that reason it is dismaying that, as Joe Redishshown, student attitudes about physics based on his Mland Physics Expectations~MPEX! survey become less ‘‘favorable’’ after most traditional courses.6 Two examples ofunfavorable student attitudes are that physics is primaabout ‘‘memorizing and using formulas’’ and that physics‘‘unrelated to experiences outside the classroom.’’ Redalso found that nontraditional instruction using tutorials fano better than traditional courses in shaping student attitualthough workshop physics classes at Dickenson Collegeshow an improvement.6 However, because the results fWorkshop Physics were at only one particular school—school that lacks an engineering college—it is possiblethe key factor was the type of student body rather thanstyle of instruction.

The unfavorable attitudes that most students seem tovelop as a result of taking traditional~and possibly also nontraditional! introductory physics courses may say more ab

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student motivations than the pedagogy used. Recall thaintroductory courses most students are taking physics onlfulfill a requirement. Starting with that initial student pespective, only an extremely skilled instructor might be abto get the majority of his/her students to see the intrinbeauty of our subject, and not merely a hurdle to get ove

STUDENT CAPABILITIES AND ATTITUDES

Perhaps it should not be too surprising that most studethink that physics is all about ‘‘memorizing and using fomulas,’’ because that’s how average students get their aage grades. It would be extremely interesting, howeversee how student attitudes about what it takes to succeephysics correlate with their grades in physics. Thus, evethere were no overall improvement in student attitudes ataking physics, we might have greater confidence thatwere doing a good job if our A and B students were molikely to agree that physics is not primarily about ‘‘memoriing and using formulas.’’ Conversely, if we found that stdents who received high grades in our courses were thewho more frequently claimed that physics is all about memrizing and using formulas, we should be especially cocerned and take a hard look at our exams and our pedagWhat I am saying is that, in evaluating our success aphysics teacher, we need to pay more attention to the difences in attitudes between our A and B students and ouand F students, and how the attitudes of each group chaduring our courses.

The idea of measuring our success as a teacher by looat student attitudes of our ‘‘better’’ students runs counter tnumber of widely held beliefs, and possibly also to the idology of many educational reformers. The physics educaresearch effort is aimed at developing a curriculum to hall students learn physics better. It does not seem overlyterested in ‘‘intrinsic’’ differences between students that eable some to succeed with little effort, while others ‘‘get ionly after considerable struggle if ever. I can still rememba time, however, when the conventional wisdom was tsome students have what it takes to develop a masterydifficult subject such as physics, while others simply did neven after expending considerable effort.

Unfortunately, the ‘‘conventional wisdom’’ of that earlieera may also have wrongly put most female and minostudents into the pool of those who were unlikely to succein physics. However, just because it is now clear thatcapability to succeed in physics knows no gender or raboundaries, it does not necessarily follow that students’ abties are unimportant in determining their success in physcourses, or that such abilities are less important in determing success than the type of instruction we offer. On the othand, it is equally true that we need to work with the studewe get, as much as we might wish that more of them camus with better preparation or ability.

Still, there is a real question of where we set the bar, awhether the bar should be set at the same level for alldents, or alternatively whether grades should be insteameasure of progress made, given an individual studestarting point. In today’s era of students as consumers, mstudents and some faculty believe that our courses shoulstructured so that conscientious students who put in a ‘‘rsonable’’ amount of time and effort are entitled to a decgrade in a course. I would respectfully disagree.

All of us can learn a great deal from our failures in lif

25Robert Ehrlichbject to the terms at: http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP:

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and students need to be given an opportunity to fail as was to succeed. Contrary to the prediction of self-estetheory, failure actually seems to motivate some students,cording to educational researcher Martin Covington.7 Manyof us have observed examples of students who persevafter receiving several early D’s and F’s, and eventuagraduated with a physics degree. Moreover, if an early fure in first-year/sophomore physics should dissuade a stufrom a less than suitable career path, that failure may bkinder blow than inflated mediocre passing grades whichlay students’ recognition that they have made a wrong choto much later in their college careers.

For example, around 90% of biology majors at GeoMason University consider themselves to be on the pre-mtrack when they start out, but only about 7% of these sdents end up going to medical school. If we made a ccerted effort to see that no one got left behind, and somesaw to it that all students passed the intro course~presumablyalso including those that never bothered to come to cla!,we really wouldn’t be doing pre-meds any favors. In thcase, medical schools with their limited number of spacwould just set the required GPA bar a bit higher, and worightly conclude that physics teachers had inflated thgrades.

Clearly, we cannot afford to throw up our hands and pthe blame for failure on our students if we should find thsay 95 % fail intro physics. However, I would claim that wshould also worry if 95% of our students are doing well incalculus or algebra-based physics course. It gives mepleasure to see a single student fail my classes, but I belthat the only way that at least 95% of students could do win introductory physics is if we have dumbed-down oteaching to an unconscionable degree.

I don’t know exactly what percentage of poor physigrades I would find acceptable, but I do know that it shobe higher than many other subjects, given the nature ofdiscipline, and the mathematical and reasoning skillsmany of today’s college students. I believe that the higdrop rates in physics compared to other subjects is duemarily to the subject’s greater difficulty, and the greaamount of work needed to achieve a good grade. A claimbeen made by Seymour and Hewitt that the higher droprates in the sciences are an indicator of the poor teachinthose subjects.8 However, that claim has questionable reevance for physics, because physics majors were a sfraction of the students interviewed, and also becauseinterviewed no students who dropped out of subjects outthe sciences. Tobias is probably correct with her thesisstudents who now do poorly in our introductory physicourses ‘‘are not dumb, they’re just different.’’9 However,those ‘‘differently-abled’’ students are probably less likelysuccessfully complete a physics major, no matter what pegogy we adopt in our introductory physics courses—at leI am unaware of any data that show the contrary.

ACCESS AND ACADEMIC STANDARDS

Most educational reformers not only claim that the hidrop out rate in physics courses is an indicator of poor teaing, but that the denial of access of large numbers of studto certain fields and careers is bad for society. They wofurther claim that by changing our teaching methods, wein fact greatly improve student access without loweringbar.10 Again, I am unconvinced. If one is strongly committe

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to improving access, it may be easy to become persuathat the bar has not been lowered, when in fact it haespecially when issues of race and gender are involved.

For example, one method of assessment in the new pgogy relies on group projects in lieu of exams. When usedintroductory courses, I believe that group projects, althouthey might have good motivational value, invariably lowstandards. Written group projects, if not monitored with grcare, allow weaker or lazy students to coast, and they encage the inappropriate use of internet Web sites.11 Both ofthese kinds of abuses can be very difficult for instructorsdetect—especially in introductory courses having large nubers of students.

So, getting back to my main subject, how do we knowwe are doing a good job in our teaching? There needs, oously, to be some non-negligible fraction of students whoreasonably well in our courses, though it could fall far shof 100%, depending on the nature of the course. A calcubased course for engineering and science students mhave a much higher percentage of poor performers thaliberal arts physics course, where we need be less conceabout compromising high standards or ‘‘watering down’’ tcourse.

I would justify lower standards for conceptual physicourses in terms of promoting greater science literacy amstudents who otherwise would not take any physics. Moover, a good case can be made that we are not actuallyplying lower standards, just because many more studsuccessfully complete conceptual physics courses. Ethough many mathematically challenged students percthese courses as being easier, they may cover extremelphisticated concepts—and hence in some sense they aretainly not ‘‘easy.’’

If we are doing a good job in our teaching, we needrespect our students as individuals~regardless of their abili-ties!, and have them respect us as well. We need to approeach new semester with enthusiasm, and with a willingnto try new things and honestly evaluate the results.should not be wedded to any one particular approach, bold-fashioned lecturing, the latest fad in interactive teachior the latest Web applications. We need to be open to theof appropriate technology, but not be so enamored of it twe view our courses through the prism of technology, thatsearching for uses of the technology, rather than thinkabout the best way to teach our subject. If we are successome fraction of our students still won’t succeed—eventhey spend a considerable amount of time and effort. Hoever, among those who do succeed in the challenging subthat is physics, there will be many that find it useful to thefuture studies and their chosen careers. We may evenlucky enough to hear from some occasional students, whoor 20 years later drop by, and tell us that ‘‘hey that courstook with you was great and really made me think, althouI only got a C.’’

Physics teachers who try to assess their own competeare in a similar position as professionals in any field.Kruger and Dunning have shown, incompetent people gerally are quite unaware of the depths of their incompetenand rarely examine their own performance critically.12 Con-versely, highly competent people are highly critical of theown performance, and are continually seeking ways toprove. So, if you think that you are doing a great job in yophysics teaching and long ago have found the methoddoing it well, chances are that you’re fooling yourself.

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Summary: You are likely doing a good job if you

d and your students respect each otherd start each semester with enthusiasmd try and evaluate new teaching methodsd keep up with advances in physicsd encourage deep understandingd maintain high grading standardsd take student evaluations seriously—but nottoo seriously

SUCCESS AT THE DEPARTMENTAL LEVEL

So far I’ve talked mainly about how we can know if we’rdoing a good job as an individual physics teacher. Let’s nconsider how we can answer the question at the level oacademic department, and also for the physics teachingfession. Note that my talk title stresses how we~not someoneelse! can know if we’re doing a good job. At the departmelevel, in other words, I’m not concerned here with whattakes to keep the dean happy. Although, of course, in realsuch outside perceptions can be a matter of life and deatha department such as physics, which is often under thefor having low enrollments and very few majors. In facmuch of the pressure on departments to innovate comessuch outside forces, which are on balance desirable inventing departments from becoming complacent.

However, let’s keep the focus on a physics departmeself-assessment of their performance. For example, I belthat efforts to increase the number of majors and decreattrition rates are intrinsically neither desirable nor undeable. If such efforts either water down the major or transfothe subject matter into something that it is not, then I beliethey are undesirable. ‘‘Holding the line’’ on standards for tmajor is all the more important in a world where all thoutside pressures are in the opposite direction. Couldimagine any dean ever telling your department that it neto tighten up its curriculum and increase standards so areduce an overly large number of majors and unqualifipersons entering the profession? We should preserve thtellectually challenging nature of our subject~for majors!,while simultaneously making the subject as accessiblepossible to the general student body in science~or physics!literacy courses.

As my department’s undergraduate coordinator, I amone who signs the form when students drop out of the maI often will jokingly tell students who bring the form to mthat we don’t permit students to drop out.~I might eventuallyfind one who believes me!! I always ask students who wisto drop out why they have decided to leave the major. Radoes the stated reason relate to any dissatisfaction withcific courses, instructors, or pedagogy. The most recentstudents to drop out of physics had not yet taken a sincourse in the subject at the college level. They bothplained ~in identical words! that while they loved physicsthey hated math, and they were put off by the amountmath needed to complete the major. Obviously, in these cI did not attempt to dissuade the two students from thdecisions to drop, but the comment about loving physicshating math made me wonder where students get thethat they could pursue their interest in majoring in physwithout a significant amount of math. One of the two sdents had taken advanced placement physics in high schand was obviously aware of the mathematical nature ofsubject, but I am uncertain what high school physics baground the other student had if any. Perhaps the ‘‘lov

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physics, but hating math’’ syndrome is partly a consequeof enrollment in high school conceptual physics cours~This increasingly popular offering might help explain whhigh school physics enrollments are now probably higthan any time since World War II, yet the number of physbaccalaureates continues to decline.13!

Although it is important that courses stress conceptualderstanding as well as problem solving, I think it wouldinsanity to add a track to the major in ‘‘qualitative physicseven though it might make the major much more accessto mathematically challenged students. Interestingly, thera unit on our campus, ‘‘New Century College,’’ which untlast year, would have allowed students to design a majo‘‘qualitative physics’’~or almost anything else for which thecould find an advisor!. Fortunately, that unit is now subsumed within the College of Arts and Sciences, and sdesigned majors can no longer be watered down versionexisting majors.

The preceding criticism of a ‘‘qualitative physics’’ degredoes not extend to versions of the major that may be of gvalue for students pursuing a wide range of careers outphysics, as long as the program has a sufficient levemathematical rigor. Clearly, the ‘‘devil is in the details’’ isuch cases.

ASSESSING STUDENT PERFORMANCE

The access issue is a crucial one for physics departmein view of the high drop rate in the major, especially if onshould find that minority students or females shouldoverly represented among the students that drop out. Apartment must be sure that the introductory coursesequally accessible and welcoming to all groups, and alsohelp is provided to struggling students. But beyond thathink it is inappropriate to adjust methods for assessingdent performance, with the explicit goals of either increasthe size of underrepresented groups, or decreasing thetion of weaker students. Traditionally, assessment is dusing grades on exams. If your grading scheme doesn’t treward deep student understanding of physics—then chait. But, don’t keep changing it in order to achieve some gdeemed socially desirable. Assertions that we need to repour so-called ‘‘gatekeeping’’ courses with courses thatmore welcoming to students smack of hidden and nothidden agendas.14

Finally, when we tinker with methods of assessing studperformance, we introduce a large measure of circularity iefforts to reform pedagogy and curriculum. If you wantprove any educational innovation is a ‘‘success,’’ you calways find some method of student assessment under wit will be superior.

The goal of designing new methods of student assessmthat allow disadvantaged students to succeed in greater nbers is being given a big boost by a new science educaprogram funded by the NSF.15 Undoubtedly, most peoplesubmitting grant proposals will sincerely believe that sucgoal can be met without compromising standards in the mjor. But, when one pits the prospect of major grant fundiagainst intellectual honesty, I’m not convinced that moproject directors will be entirely objective about whethernot academic standards have been truly compromised.physics education community and the nation will not be wserved if the end result of this well-intentioned NSF initiatiis to water down the physics major at many schools.

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Maintaining high standards for the major should befirst prerequisite of a department that is ‘‘doing a good jobBut, maintaining standards need not mean that we aretempting to preserve the status quo and refusing to innovWe must do a better job to ensure that course contentparticularly course exams focus on the physics knowleand skills we especially value. As the nature of our disciplchanges, a department needs to be sure that it is keepinwith new developments, and adding courses and optionsreflect those developments. Conscientious departmentsalso engage in interdisciplinary ‘‘trespassing,’’ by offerinoptions relating physics to other fields such as biology, enneering, or computer science. They also need to better mvate students~and retain them in the major! by adoptinginstructional strategies from some of those other disciplinEngineering students, for example, routinely work on desprojects, which could work just as well in some upper-levphysics courses. A physics department that is doing a gjob in teaching will have lots of majors working on researprojects with faculty—a technique that is perhaps the vbest motivator of all in attracting and keeping students inmajor. These kinds of one-on-one experiences are jusvaluable for students who seek immediate employment ugraduation as they are for students who intend to gograduate school. A department must not measure its sucbased on the relative percentage of its majors that go ograduate school.

The number of majors that a department graduates eyear will invariably be carefully scrutinized by the adminitration. With the drop in output in recent years, the averanumber of bachelors per U.S. physics program is only foand the most common number in a given year is actuzero, that is, more schools produce zero bachelors in a gyear than any other number.16 Could a department thagraduates an average of say 0.5 students per year conitself ‘‘successful?’’ I would say that the answer is ‘‘yesassuming that it is successful by all other measures.claim that a department producing very few graduates costill consider itself successful seems ludicrous only ifthink of the department as a company producing anwanted product. The claim is not so ludicrous if we thiinstead of the department more as an artist, author, or pawhose success is not measured by the quantity of theirput. Obviously few departments housing a program grading few majors are going to admit that maybe they shouldout of business in the best interests of the profession awhole. Opinions may differ on whether such an attitudemerely a matter of parochial self-interest or reflectivevalid institutional need.

Summary: Your department is doing a good job if it

d maintains high academic standardsd encourages and welcomes all studentsd adds new options in major as neededd tries different forms of instructiond offers student research opportunitiesd offers a range of nonmajor coursesd listens to its studentsd graduates some majors!

THE PROFESSION AS A WHOLE

With regard to the physics teaching profession as a whour success needs to be measured both by the job we d

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creating a scientifically literate citizenry as well as in prducing future generations of physicists. Clearly, we needdo a better job on the first score, given the low statescientific literacy in the nation, and the increasing numberpublic policy issues—such as global warming and nuclmissile defense—that have a large physics component.though U.S. graduate physics programs have increasibeen a magnet for those from abroad seeking a firsteducation, the decline in numbers at the undergraduate lcontinues unabated. We can make all sorts of argumabout how physics graduates are well suited to a wide raof professions both within and outside of physics its~which they are!!, and how the nation really needs mophysicists, whether it knows it or not. But, if our argumendon’t reverse a 12-year-long downtrend in physics baccareates, we need to either offer fewer degree programs~ordegree programs in related areas!, or alternatively help ad-ministrators understand why physics programs need topreserved even though they graduate very few majors. Oously, the difficulty of that ‘‘sale’’ approaches infinity as thnumber of graduates approaches zero.

CONCLUDING NOTE

When delivered at the 2001 AAPT Summer Meeting, thtalk generated somewhat polarized reactions—perhapscause some listeners interpreted it as an attack on the pheducation reform movement. However, no such attack wintended. As in the case of any ‘‘movement,’’ there may bcertain degree of demonization of outsiders. By challengcertain assumptions held by some of those involved in phics education reform, I wanted to remind listeners thatall ofus are~or should be! concerned with how to do a better join our teaching, whether we consider ourselves reformernot.

1E. F. Redish, ‘‘Teaching Physics: Figuring Out What Works,’’ Phys. Tod52, 24–30~January 1999!.

2R. R. Hake, ‘‘Interactive-engagement versus traditional methods: Athousand student survey of mechanics test data for introductory phycourses,’’ Am. J. Phys.66, 64–74~1998!.

3E. Mazur, Peer Instruction: A User’s Manual~Prentice–Hall, UpperSaddle River, NJ, 1997!.

4E. F. Redish~private communication!.5D. Bligh, What’s the Use of Lectures?~Jossey-Bass, 2000!.6See Ref. 1. ‘‘Favorable’’ attitudes are, by definition, those that a groupexpert physics instructors mutually agreed on at least 90% of the tim

7M. Covington,Making the Grade: A Self-Worth Perspective on Motivatioand School Reform~Cambridge U.P., Cambridge, 1992!.

8E. Seymour and N. M. Hewitt,Talking About Leaving: Why Undergraduates Leave the Sciences~Westview, 2000!.

9S. Tobias,They’re Not Dumb, They’re Different: Stalking the Second T~Science News Books, 1994!.

10For example, see ‘‘A Professor at Notre Dame Sparks a Quiet Revoluin How Chemistry is Taught,’’ in the May 25, 2001 Chronicle of HigheEducation, which notes that the retention rate in introductory chemitaught by Dennis Jacobs has been increased by 55%.

11A number of anti-plagiarism Web sites exist, perhaps the largest bTurnitin.com, which checks about 6000 papers daily, and compares tto more than 2 billion web sites, according to an article in the June2001 issue of USA Today. More than 23% of papers tested by Turnitinout to have been plagiarized from the web.

12J. Kruger and D. Dunning, ‘‘Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficuties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated S

28Robert Ehrlichbject to the terms at: http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP:

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Assessment,’’ J. Pers Soc. Psychol.77, 1121–1124~1999!.13See: http://www.aip.org/statistics for the Enrollment and Degrees Rep14‘‘Balancing the Equation: Where Are Women and Girls in Science, En

neering and Technology,’’ National Council for Research on Women, 2Report.

ENGINEERS AND

NEWTON: When you work that switch byINSPECTOR: The light goes on.NEWTON: You establish an electrical contelectricity, Richard?INSPECTOR: I am no physicist.

NEWTON: I don’t understand much about ithe basis of natural observation. I write downseveral formulae. Then the engineers comeformulae. They treat electricity as a pimp tremachines—and a machine can only be usedled to its invention. So any fool nowadays canpats theINSPECTOR’Sshoulders.! And that’s wfair.

Friedrich Durrenmatt~translated by James Kirkup!, The Phys

Submitted by George Goth.

29 Am. J. Phys., Vol. 70, No. 1, January 2002ticle is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AAPT content is su

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15NSF Program 01-82, ‘‘Assessment of Student Achievement in Undgraduate Education.’’

16R. Ehrlich, ‘‘Where Are the Physics Majors?,’’ Am. J. Phys.66, 79–86~1998!; ‘‘Long-Term Trends in Physics Bachelor Degree Output,’’ PhyTeach.36, 12–17~1998!.

PHYSICISTS

the door, what happens, Richard?

act. Do you understand anything about

t either. All I do is to elaborate a theory about it onthis theory in the mathematical idiom and obtainalong. They don’t care about anything except theats a whore. They simply exploit it. They build

when it becomes independent of the knowledge thatswitch on a light or touch off the atomic bomb.~Hehat you want to arrest me for, Richard. It’s not

icists~Evergreen Press, Olympia, WA, 1962!, p. 22.

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