Practical Access Podcast

S6 E2: Growing More Physicists

October 13, 2021 Season 6 Episode 2
Practical Access Podcast
S6 E2: Growing More Physicists
Show Notes Transcript

Physics training can provide students with broad problem-solving skills and familiarizes them with a wide range of technologies and the underlying physical principles. Today, Drs. Lisa Dieker and Rebecca Hines dive into the field of physics with their colleague, Dr. Malcolm Butler. Dr. Butler is currently a Professor and the Coordinator of the Ph. D. Program in Science Education at the University of Central Florida. His research interests include writing to learn in science, physics teacher education, and equity and diversity in science. Tune in today to hear more from Dr. Butler and the importance of "growing" more scientists and its impact on education. 

Don't forget we love to hear from our listeners! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. We look forward to receiving your questions on our Google Phone (407) 900- 9305, Facebook (Practical Access), Twitter (@AccessPractical), or Instagram (@Practical_Access).


Lisa Dieker 00:01
Welcome to Practical Access I am Lisa Dieker.

Rebecca Hines
And I'm Rebecca Hines and Lisa I know you're excited to introduce today's guest. 

Lisa Dieker 
Yes, so we have today with us our fabulous director of the School of Teacher Education and a physics, science guru and a dear friend of both of ours, Dr. Malcolm Butler. Thanks for joining us Malclom.

Malcolm Butler
Thank you for having me ladies, it's a pleasure to be here with you today. 

Lisa Dieker 
Well great, we're excited to have you. So, we're going to start right with the core question we want you to just answer and solve right in the beginning and it's called that shortage of physics teachers. I wonder if you have some thoughts about how principals, current science teachers, teacher prep programs might get us a few more of those folks and how we might do better to get a wider range of diversity and just access to physics teachers. It's important and you are the person who has that background.

Malcolm Butler 01:06
So we'll start with, this is probably worthy of a workshop in and of itself probably even a conference, but I think the truth of the matter is that physics teaching is not much different than teaching in general. That truly physics is about changing the lives of people and I think that is the selling point even for students who are pursuing physics degrees. I'm using my own self as a reference point. The last thing I wanted to do was be a physics teacher, that's why I went into physics and yet I got turned on by working with young children in an after school program, I took an exceptional education class as a part of my graduate studies and I got hooked on this idea of not just becoming a scientist but also growing more physicists. And so that's where the hook came for me. I didn't even know I could be a physics teacher I thought they just had this factory over here and here comes the physics teachers marking out of it. I didn't know I could be one and that's what was amazing about it is this idea of just awareness and that you really can touch lives and change the trajectory of people that's a selling point that I think not only is good for physics but for teaching in general. 

Rebecca Hines
You know Malcolm I think that's a great perspective in terms of finding your passion and then extending it into education. If you think about that and then think about little kids for a minute so if I'm an elementary school teacher, what do you think I could do to help kids start to get some early interest into physics so when I get to high school it doesn't feel so scary. What could I do?

Malcolm Butler
Yeah Becky that's a great point and I think about some of the researches and psychologists and all of these amazing people that have thought just about that same question. It's about, in physics in particular, taking the abstract and making it concrete. So we have all of these concepts in physics, you know, we talk about light years, how many light years are we away from the next planet and then we go the other extreme we talk about angstrom stick sample, microscopic. That's hard for someone to fathom those sizes, however there are so many ways to make those realistic like when we look at these models of the solar system. So you have the sun right here and then you map it out with Mars and all of the planets lined up and you get this scale of what it actually looks like. So I think the biggest challenge is taking these concepts that in physics, oh my goodness, it's so hard I'll never understand it and you start to apply it in real life. I mean the two of you are sitting in chairs right now that if it wasn't for physics you wouldn't be sitting in. There's something called equal and opposite forces. If it wasn't for equal and opposite forces and it wasn't for that chair keeping you from going down, as soon as you move that chair away, gravity's going to pull you down to the earth. Well, you can't see the gravity but you sure are experiencing it right now and you're thankful for that chair providing an opposite force to gravities acceleration. So that for me Becky is at the core of the young children is helping them take these things that they can't necessarily see but give them examples of what it looks like in their every day lives. And again, you're sitting there, you have all kinds of examples of that going on right now and many more I could point out. I see a cup with a straw in it, there's so much science and physics going on right there where you take up that cup and you create this vacuum, we call it sucking, there's a vacuum that causes the liquid to go from the cup to your mouth. There's lots of examples of that and I think when students see that, and I've seen it for myself, the proverbial lightbulb comes on, "you mean I can do that? Because I'm doing it every day." You are doing it every day and yes you can do it. 

Lisa Dieker 04:50
Yeah, and I'm going to piggy back off of that a little bit because I know Malcolm your passion and your work and your research has been to be in schools of poverty and diversity and the beauty and the opportunities that exist there and I know that's in your core DNA is to promote a stronger teaching force as well as a more diverse teaching force. What can we do better in society to make sure people of all backgrounds see themselves as physicists as they move up the grade levels and once they're in the field to keep them. I know UCF, I think we were what five years ago or something number two in the country and we produced like four physics teachers and that was thanks yo your team. Oh, six sorry I missed it by two, six teachers but keeping them is hard because corporate America wants them so badly. So what is the answer as kids move up and then once kids do become teachers to keep them in that really critical shortage area. Of all the areas it is probably the most critical in the country. 

Malcolm Butler
Lisa it goes back to, I think, and you know there are multiple ways to address these big, big what I call wicked problems. I think one of the ways is to be very intentional about what we call those induction years so we do all that work to recruit them from physics if they were a physics major like me and then we get them in the classroom and five years later they're gone. And sometimes they're gone because they have other, more attractive offers like Becky was saying, this is their aspiration, but in many cases sometimes we push them out. So in those induction years it's so critical to set them up for success, to support them, to provide them them those opportunities like we have here at UCF where they can do research experiences for teachers where they actually come back here during the summer and they not only learn physics, they got to feed that side of themselves, they also come up with new strategies, new lesson plans, new curriculum materials, all of that so that when they go back to the classroom they're eager to try out all of these things with students and they're really trying to meet the needs of every single student in their class. That to me is what keeps them excited so that when all of these other opportunities come along or things that might be pushing them away, they have these other really strong examples that says I'm making a difference, I feel like this is where I'm supposed to be, and I feel like I have a supportive network that's going to help me to continue to grow and get better. And i think in some cases that "get better" is not a part of the equation and I think again in those induction years, that zero to five, we really have to promote this idea that physics is exciting, that it's a great place to be, so that those teachers that we recruited and that we won a national award for stay in the classroom and let me add to that Lisa, several of those were from underrepresented groups and they really wanted to be in the classroom for every single student in that classroom because they knew that representation mattered. Two of them are actually females and they're still in the classroom doing amazing things with young people. 

Rebecca Hines 07:49
So, you know, one of the things that you kind of touched on there Malcolm is that idea of, as we put professional into the field of education, not everyone is prepared for the wide range of needs of the kids in the classroom. And you know, you and Lisa and I, we are all so well aware that you could be a student with a learning disability and be a master physicist. So you know we so often, one of the barriers is, we may not have special educators who have that content expertise, but if I'm the special educator and I'm asked to come into your classroom to support you so that my students can have access to your content expertise, how do I come in there and support the students and work with you without feeling like an assistant? What are some meaningful things that I could do in a collaborative setting so that we can open up your room to kids of all abilities? 

Malcolm Butler
That's an excellent question and a point to make Becky. You know, we talk about Albert Einstein is kind of our poster child, he was identified as a student with special needs, he is the epitome of physics you know everybody's got the t-shirts with Albert Einstein on it. Well, he was identified as a student with a special need, that's where he started his life. So, I think that's critical for us to identify those places where we already have very good examples of students who have these special needs who wound up excelling in science. It goes back to a point you made too Becky, we got to, we have to be able to create a space for those critical conversations, and I think that's part of the challenge in science and even in education. But being able to sit in a room with the high school physics teacher, the resource teacher who's coming in to work with English learners, the teacher who's working with students with special abilities, all of them sitting in a room and saying "what is in the best interest of the students?" And dare I say, I'm going to say something that some people might find, maybe provocative, for me it's not, actually having the students be a part of the conversation. What are their needs when we have students who are in those spaces talking with them about "how can you be successful?" And then we set out and we have those conversations, so I would love to be able to give you that laundry list of ideas Becky, but I think it starts with being able to have those kinds of critical conversations amongst those key players and, again, maybe sometimes including the student in those conversations about how can we best help this student meet their individual needs. I think the conversation has to go there and again, I've had some great successes, I've had some challenges, let's call them that, along the way and many times as I reflected on those, I've been a part of the problem because I didn't make the time to have those critical conversations with my colleagues. 

Lisa Dieker 10:45
I love it. So I'm going to ask you then to think of the younger self since you kind of pointed back to your own conversation with yourself and I know from talking to you Malcolm that you have a great sister who is a special edu teacher who made sure you were indoctrinated into access for people with disabilities and that is a part of your DNA. But, imagine you're talking to a brand new physics teacher and they're getting ready and they get their roster and they're like "uhhhh, I've got three students with disabilities, two with second language, and I'm teaching physics." Where do you recommend they start or what's the first thing that they should do as they think about their work with a range of kids giving them access. I know you mentioned talking to kids, but are there other things you think they should do to the physics content or other things they should think about to kind of launch the beginning of their work. 

Malcolm Butler
Sure, and thank you for acknowledging my sister because I tell you I wouldn't be sitting in this chair if it wasn't for her and her orientation to education and what it meant, and you know I've shared pictures with you of me standing in the middle of her students, my dear friends, at the Special Olympics event. So I went because we were going to eat at a restaurant afterwards. I couldn't compete with them but I was right there in the middle of them. I didn't know it was Special Olympics I just knew I got a cool t-shirt and I got to hang out with my buddies, so that was my orientation early on and it's only later in life I realized that my sister did a great job of celebrating differences. She truly celebrated them. So, that segues to my response to your question, I think for a new teacher it is so critical to make sure that a part of the process of how they help those students is to connect with others who have been working with those students. For example, Becky's question, I would not start teaching high school students physics until I talk with those student's teachers. The resource teachers that you mentioned. All of those folks should be a part of my initial thought process, and finding out what has been successful in working with those students, and build my physics curriculum around what I know they are able to do and how to challenge them because part of that equation is challenging them as well and I hope you would agree with that. So how do we create that? I think the initial thought process it one, I need to go down the hall and talk to this particular teacher who is the resource teacher that works with English learners, I need to make sure I go and talk to the resource teacher who's worked with students with special needs, and when I say that I'm also talking about my potentially gifted students as well because there may be resources that my colleagues are aware of that will also help me to be successful. I think many times because physics is seen as this "very challenging" subject, that the physics teacher tends to be seen as the person that they don't need any help, they're fine, they got the content, they're good to go when the reality is they need just as much help, maybe more help, because they're not seeing their physics through the lens of those students that you just said are on my roster. How are you going to help the students with dyslexia learn all of these physics words because we know physics and science  are very vocabulary latent, there's a nomenclature. How am I going to help that student? Well, if I don't talk with the people with whom this student has already been working, maybe imagine this, talking with the parents or the care givers, all of those people and start my work there. They're going to get the physics, I'm going to get that, that's a part of the equation but I say we downplay that part. Not downplay to the point of not addressing it, but start to focus on, as a new teacher, what are these other things I can be doing to reenforce and get them to see, as I say, not covering the physics, uncovering it. 

Rebecca Hines 14:43
Well, Malcolm I'm going to end my questions with a simple one in line with our idea of being practical. So, back to me as a special edu teacher and maybe I'm working with elementary aged students, I might be a gen edu teacher honestly, I hear your passion, I want to instill that passion inn students, what's a resource I can use just to get the conversation started? I don't have a physics background, what's an easy resource I can use. Wether it's a book I should read, a website I can go to, where can I start? 

Malcolm Butler
So there's some really cool ones out there Becky and I would start with PhET, PhET is the simulations for physics. another challenge with physics sometimes is that we don't have access to stuff, you know I've got to have all this cool equipment. I need an accelerometer, I need an oscilloscope, I need all this cool equipment. Well, the PhET Simulations are just that, they're computerized simulations. Students can go in and adjust variables and play with it, so PhET is a great place. There's also something called Physics for Elementary Teachers, it's an actual curriculum and it's really built on this idea of hands-on, minds on so both of those components are there. So it's not just the students playing with cool stuff and sliding Hot Wheel cars down the ramp, there's that built in minds-on component that helps them understand the science and the physics involved in helping the car go down the ramp. And so those are two resources that I've used in the past and I've found both of them to be very very good at helping students from many walks of life come into physics and come to appreciate physics in a way that I could have never imagined and those are resources. Of course both of you know we tap into those resources when it's educationally and instructionally appropriate. But those are two Becky that immediately come to mind, I have colleagues that have used them, there's lots of research, they're research based, lots of best practices that have been involved in those. Very focused on evidence that shows that when students use those kinds of resources not only does their understanding of physics go up, their appreciation for physics goes up as well and to me that's what's probably most important because I would like everybody to become a physicist, you know, I know both of you kind of like science so I could recruit both if you to be a physicist.

Rebecca Hines   
I'm ready to go look at that site right now. 

Malcolm Butler
Way cool, but the other part of the equation is wether you become a physicist or a street musician. To have that appreciation for physics and understand how physics applies to your life is probably even more important. So, if you're on the street corner playing music, there's notes, there's amplitudes, there's frequency, there's volume. I would like to be able to talk with a person playing on the street about the beauty of the music and those twelve notes and how those twelve notes make up all of music and also talk about you're playing at a different tempo, there's a frequency there, there's am amplitude, you don't want to play too loud all of that's the physics of it and to me that's what makes it beautiful. There's a book actually called The Jazz of Physics and it's a book my son and I have read. It's a little more, I would call it a coffee table book, but it speaks to that kind of question, what are some things you can do to help understand the physics of jazz and the jazz of physics. They go hand and hand.

Lisa Dieker 18:01
I love it. Well and my last question for you goes right along with that. First of all you need a little bit more passion about physics I just want to let you know and that's exactly why we wanted the privilege to talk to you but I think your passion is just as deep for teacher edu so I'm going to ask you a really open ended question you can answer any way you like, but what would be your one wish for teacher education in the future.

Malcolm Butler
You're absolutely right Lisa and Becky that I love physics, I think I love teaching more and I love learning most. I love physics, I love teaching, I just love learning even more and I think that's the thing I would want for teacher education and for teaching is that at some point in our lives, in my life, that we have not just a high quality and competent teacher in every classroom, we also have a caring teacher in every classroom. And I know we may not accomplish that in my lifetime, who knows if we will ever, but that's why I push myself so hard, that's why I push my colleagues so hard is because I truly believe that every single child deserved to have a phenomenal teacher every single year. Not 13 years of education and you get one great teacher, I think that should happen for every single child, every single year, in every single classroom, and I think it's doable. I think being at a university we're at the universe of ideas and I think that's the hard work and that's the heart work. We do all kinds of amazing things and I'm privileged to work with two people right here who do that kind of work, amazing things and I know your passion is very similar. We want every single child to experience what great teaching and what great learning looks like and that's what I would want for our School of Teacher Education is to keep pushing ourselves, many times inn spite of what we might be hearing in the news, what might be happening to us, that at our core we really want our children, as I refer to them "my babies," to experience what good teaching and good learning looks like every time they walk on a school campus. My son, he was seven years old, second grade, he said school should be a good place to be, for the custodians, for the cafeteria workers, for the front office folks, for everyone on that campus, he said it should be a good place to be and I think that at the core that's what I would want for everybody. The school doesn't have to have a fancy name, it doesn't have to win all of these great awards, I believe in all of them, but at the core, a school should be a good place to be and that's what I would hope for teacher education and the work we're doing, I know we're actually pushing the envelope and I think the work we're doing is someday going to help us to have that kind of accomplishment in place that we're all going to have schools be good places to be even more so than what we have today.

Lisa Dieker 21:03
Well, thank you so much for joining us Malcolm. We appreciate you as a friend and a colleague and for joining and sharing with us your passion for physics on Practical Access. If you have questions folks you can send them to our Facebook page Practical Access or send us a tweet @accesspractical. Thank you!

Rebecca Hines
Thanks Malcolm.

Malcolm Butler
Thank you, take care!