Advancing Physics is a contemporary course, developed by the Institute of Physics in the United Kingdom. Its core aims and objectives are unique and modern. They attract interest among Japanese high school teachers and university professors as well. Seminars, workshops, and classwork trials have been held during the year 2001 in several cities in Japan.
A group of high school teachers who have strong interest on the Advancing Physics curriculum formed a study group with a professor of physics in Kyoto University of Education. They first studied the curriculum itself in detail, and planned a classwork trial using it. The purpose of the trial is to inspect whether this curriculum is acceptable to Japanese students, and adaptable in the Japanese educational system. The classwork trial was done in August 2002, with 24 high school students in various high schools in Kyoto and 8 university students. The background of the participants were diverse, from students with no experience of physics classes, to university science majors. “Sensing,” chapter 2 of the AS course textbook was selected for the 3 days of classwork.
In the preparation process, the study group tried most of the activities and demonstrations in the textbook, and selected appropriate experimental subjects for use in class.
The activities of this study group was a new type of in-service training for high school teachers which opened a new type of collaboration between universities and high shools.
In this presentation, we will report the classwork in detail, with students’ reaction to their experience of sensor experiments. We will also analyze the answers to questionaires which were asked before and after every session.