Supporting Physics Teaching

The Supporting Physics Teaching initiative is intended to support specialist and non-specialist teachers who teach physics in the early years of secondary education.

Materials are available for both the 11-14 age group and the 14-16 age group. The resources are designed to help teachers to gain a better understanding of physics, to allow them to experience for themselves something of its fascination and to develop greater confidence in their teaching of it.

What is it?
The essential features of the package are a set of structured resources, which can be used by training providers as a basis for in-service training programmes or by teachers as a stand-alone training resource.

Each topic balances the consolidation of existing good practice amongst physics teachers with the development of new teaching tools to enhance current provision. There are three elements:

• The physics narrative, is a teacher focused section, bringing together the important aspects of the chosen topic in a coherent, comprehensive and engaging manner
• Teaching and learning challenges for pupils make explicit what pupils find ‘easy’ or 'difficult', drawing on both research evidence and on the classroom wisdom of practicing teachers
• Teaching approaches provide proven teaching ideas and strategies designed to present the topic in an interesting and engaging manner. The resources within this section will include some materials for direct use in teaching, such as practical activities, video clips and formative assessment materials. Such materials have been chosen to address the key teaching and learning challenges; there will be no attempt to produce a complete course

Getting the materials
The materials are now available as interactive PDFs. To download your own:

• Go to www.talkphysics.org
• Once there register, if you have not already done so. You will be sent an email containing a link which you will need to click on to activate your account
• Once you have logged in, go to ‘Find resources’ then ‘SPT resources’.  
• If you have any problems contact spt@iop.org

Will it help?
The resource was independently evaluated; the comments below were collected during this process:

• “Excellent range of strategies (…) new ideas I was not aware of. Good resources...” (Teacher)
• “I think the CD will also help me supporting not only non-specialised teachers, but also younger teachers in my department.” (Teacher)
• “Was very uncertain about electricity before and knew very little. Feel much more confident now.” (Trainee Teacher)

How do I use it?
An INSET programme is recommended if teachers are to use the resource in the intended manner and gain maximum benefit from it. Such INSET will introduce the principles of and method of working with the resources, so that teachers can then readily study other units working independently or within departments. Thus the materials developed will support departmental INSET provision within schools, and also university and other INSET providers.

The original 11-14 materials
The Institute of Physics brought groups of science teachers together to develop the materials by drawing on their own experience and expertise. Each group was led by a university lecturer in physics education, experienced in training teachers. These materials were worked into an interactive resource with the help of Atticmedia, a multimedia company.

The Project Team

Project Director:
Philip Britton, Leeds Grammar School

Project Manager:
Mary Whitehouse, Education Consultant

Project Coordinators:
Ian Lawrence, University of Birmingham
Phil Scott, University of Leeds

Team Leaders:
Ian Lawrence, University of Birmingham
Phil Scott, University of Leeds
Johnathan Osborne, King's College, London
Gren Ireson, University of Loughborough
Bob Kibble, University of Edinburgh
Billy McClune, Queen's University, Belfast
Keith Miller, Northumbria University
David Stancliffe, University of Newcastle

More details
For further details contact:
Email: spt@iop.org