KEEP Teaching

Thomas and Robin are back, locked down, but still exploring new ways of teaching physics. Thomas has been exploring the potential (and limitations of) Microsoft Forms and has found a collection of shared resources at https://groups.io/g/PhysicsQuizzes. There’s a lot of power here to help you remotely assess your students’ learning, but a few gotchas too.

We are delighted to talk to Mark Whalley, IOP Education Manager, former headteacher, and of course, a physics teacher. Robin caught up with him to chat about KEEP Teaching, a project funded by the EEF, run by the IOP, and evaluated by UCL that is looking to find out what will keep early-career physics teachers in the classroom. If you are a physics or engineering graduate, taking up an NQT post in September (or a school hiring such an NQT) get in touch via the link above to see if you can take part!

Thomas was surprised that Randomised Control Trials are happening in education, but the EEF has been doing a vast amount in this area to put some quantitative evidence behind a whole raft of educational interventions. The results are fascinating and can be found in the EEF’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit. It makes for some interesting reading, and wherever you stand on RCTs, we hope you’ll agree that the KEEP Teaching results will be powerful evidence for persuading policymakers to do more to protect our wonderful subject.

Have a wonderful half term everyone!

Join in!

Please share ideas or successes – or indeed questions by messaging us on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/physicstp.bsky.social .  You can also message us via our website contact form on every page of the web site at  the.physicsteachingpodcast.com, or email using the address given in the podcast (if we remember). We are moving away from X but can be found there as @physicstp.

Music

• Season 7: Physics Is Our Business by Miracles of Modern Science.
• Seasons 5 and 6: Crescents by Ketsa.
• Seasons 3 and 4: Disco Sheik by Podington Bear.
• Seasons 1 and 2: One legged equilibrist polka by Circus Homunculus.
• Occasionally we also use Cantina Rag by Jackson F. Smith.

The music is used under the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License