Therefore, much of the discussion will blend PER with STEM education as a continuum body of work on teaching and learning.Įducation goals have evolved to emphasize student acquisition of essential “21 st Century skills”, which define the knowledge and attributes necessary to successfully contribute to the workforce and global economy of the 21st Century (National Research Council, 2011, 2012a). Although this review has a focus on physics education research (PER), it is beneficial to expand the perspective to view physics education in the broader context of STEM learning. These goals include: domain-specific research in physics learning fostering scientific reasoning abilities that are transferable across the STEM disciplines and dissemination of research-validated curriculum and approaches to teaching and learning. Through a synthesis of the literature around twenty-first Century skills and physics education, a set of concretely defined education and research goals are suggested for future research. Aligning to the twenty-first Century learning goals, research in physics education is briefly reviewed to provide a context towards future work in promoting deep learning and fostering abilities in high-end reasoning in parallel.

The goals of introductory college courses in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines have constantly evolved from some notion of weed-out courses that emphasize content drilling, to the current constructivist active-engagement type of learning that promotes interest in STEM careers and fosters high-end cognitive abilities.įollowing the conceptually defined framework of twenty-first Century teaching and learning, this paper aims to provide contextualized operational definitions of the goals for twenty-first Century learning in physics (and STEM in general) as well as the rationale for the importance of these outcomes for current students. The learner-centered education also requires educators and researchers to focus their efforts on the learners’ needs, not only to deliver effective teaching-learning approaches, but also to continuously align instructional practices to the education goals of the times. As implied by the constructivist view, learner-centered education usually emphasizes active-engagement and inquiry style teaching-learning methods, in which the learners can effectively construct their understanding under the guidance of instruction. It stems out of the constructivist view of learning, which emphasizes that it is the learner who needs to actively construct knowledge and the teacher should assume the role of a facilitator rather than the source of knowledge. The concept of learner-centered, active learning has broad, growing support in the research literature as an empirically validated teaching practice that best promotes learning for modern day students (Freeman et al., 2014). The goals of education should therefore meet the demands of the changing world. Through a synthesis of the literature around twenty-first Century skills and physics education, a set of concretely defined education and research goals are suggested for future research, along with how these may impact the next generation physics courses and how physics should be taught in the future.Įducation is the primary service offered by society to prepare its future generation workforce. This paper provides a brief review of physics education research as a means for providing a context towards future work in promoting deep learning and fostering abilities in high-end reasoning. Although there is substantial research evidence and consensus around identifying essential twenty-first Century skills, there is a lack of research that focuses on how the related subskills interact and develop over time.

The new education standards emphasize higher end skills including reasoning, creativity, and open problem solving. Education goals have evolved to emphasize student acquisition of the knowledge and attributes necessary to successfully contribute to the workforce and global economy of the twenty-first Century.

Physics science article