Context interactions and physics faculty’s professional development: Case study

This paper investigates the interactions between context and professional development of physics instructors in a case study of two physics faculty. A phenomenological-case study approach was used to analyze two physics faculty at different institutions over a year and a half using three semistructured interviews each. The data enabled the identification of relevant context elements; the impact of these elements on physics faculty was explored by adapting a framework that examines instructors’ professional development. The analysis shows that both case study subjects used their physics expertise and growing understanding of their context to develop their physics teaching. However, this growth was enacted differently given the nature of their context, highlighting instructors’ strengths in navigating their local context to improve their physics teaching. The results show the subtleties of how context has a salient, complex, and evolving role in moderating faculty’s professional development. By taking a faculty-centric approach, this paper broadens the community’s awareness of the ways physics instructors develop their physics teaching. This work contributes to a relatively new lens by which the physics community views, discusses, and supports the professional development of physics faculty.

Figure 1

Bell and Gilbert’s framework’s diagram representation in the context of New Zealand’s science teachers’ development during a professional development program [19] As indicated before, we will be using the term domain to refer to each of these development spheres.

Figure 2

Cleopatra’s trajectory characterization in the Bell and Gilbert framework.

Figure 3

Sphinx’s trajectory characterization in the Bell and Gilbert framework.