Journal of Physics Teacher Education Online


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Journal of Physics Teacher Education Online is dedicated to investigating and documenting significant issues and challenges in the education of physics teacher candidates. With a focus on the scholarship of teaching, the journal seeks to generate discussion and promulgate sustainable, long-term changes in educational research, policy and practice. Journal articles will foster deep, significant, lasting learning for physics teacher educators and improve their ability to develop teacher candidates' and inservice teachers' understanding, skills, and dispositions.

Physics teacher educators, often only one individual working within a department of physics to prepare future teachers, are frequently isolated from their peers due to a lack of a medium of exchange. As a result, those who engage in innovative acts of teaching do not have many opportunities to share their work, and to build upon the work of others. Without an opportunity to share with like-minded peers, teacher educators are likely to remain isolated, unable to benefit from or advance the work of the physics teacher education on a broader basis. Fortunately, renewed public interest in education, the development of teacher preparation standards, and some inspiring models from physics teacher education programs around the country provide hope that the time is right for change.

The work of educating future physics teachers often involves significant shifts in thought and practice. For physics teacher education faculty, physics teacher preparation is a private act, limited to the teacher and students. Such practice is rarely evaluated by professional peers, again due to a lack of a forum to exchange ideas and share procedures. The purpose of Journal of Physics Teacher Education Online is to establish a forum through which the scholarship of teaching and learning can be exchanged widely and built upon. The hope is to support the development of new models of physics teacher education that foster deep and lasting understanding, while underlining the character of teaching itself as a scholarly endeavor worthy of recognition, support, and reward.

Page last updated September 22, 2009

Journal of Physics Teacher Education Online is independently
governed by its editorial staff who are solely responsible for its content.
JPTEO is published by the Illinois State University Department of Physics in cooperation with
ISU's Center for Mathematics, Science, and Technology (CeMaST).
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