What is happening to Physics teaching?

[gingerbear]

Report on BBC this am, that pupils studying Physics has dropped by 15% in last 10 years. Some schools no longer offer it in 6th form as there are no teachers. Kids find concepts difficult to understand.

What will happen to the scientists and engineers of the future? Or will they all study Business Management because it is easier to understand?

No, I would quite agree.

We also find that students get a real shock when they move from GCSE to AS.

Possibly the diffivulty with Physics is that is is often very 'abstract'. your students , understandably (!) frind logical determinism hard to grasp as it is a high level, fairly esoteric concept. Similrly students find using eqiuations to describe aspects of physics very hard to grasp. there are few 'real' world pegs to hang the subject on , so to speak.

But a topic in buisness studies is, almost by definition well grounded in the real world. Students will have direct experience of many of the things studied, and this helps their understanding. It is far easier to understand a companies complaints procedure than it is to understand the refraction of light.

IMHO!

and for that matter this also explains why people tend to find biology 'easier' and more aproachable than physics

Hmmm, but when I was in 6th form I did sod all work (too much clubbing!) and managed to get a B in A level in Geography and only got a U () in Physics! That's gotta tell you soemthing!

Anyway, my teacher was C-R-A-P too - went to college the next year, had a fab teacher and in a year got a B at physics A level - LOVED it!

hmm, nighty night. i did those A levels (also French) and didn't find them a doss at all.

dp is a physics graduate, none of his friends ever considered teaching for a moment. they are all, without exception, in computing jobs now.

We went to look at a senior school a couple of weeks ago and I was really pleased to see that the three sciences are taught separately from Y7 and that they also do French and Latin in Y7 with German being added in Y8.

The senior school of DD's current school has stopped teaching Latin and added psychology instead.

Oh god! The curse of psychology in schools! ARGGHH

I am sure that there are excellent teachers of psychology is schools. I am sure that there are some children who are excellent at psychology in schools.

But far too many kids think that psychology is psychiatry, many ofthem have almost no concept of what they are studying, and they do it 'Because I haven't done it before' WTF??? you pick an A level subject because it is new???

And I studied psychology at post degree level, so I'm not anti it per se, just how it is 'sold' in schools.

Dare I say it? Psychology was my 'doss' module in my 1st year of Physiology/Pharmacology degree

I have no probelm with it as a subject, it is just that the flipping kids who take it in school all think they will be 'Cracker' in the week and get switched off when they find that, it too, is quite hard at A level!

LOL at 'cracker'!!!!

Actualy they wouldn't have a clue who 'Cracker' was, but I'm an old fart

Modern Languages are not even compulsory at GCSE any more. Boo hoo...

Am off to cry into my tea about the state of 'things' today!

I loved Physics at O level. It was the only science I liked. Can't remember much, but then I did A level German and I'm a linguist and I can't remember much of that either!

mb - I did my O level in 1977.
No wonder I found it hard if it was really A level!

Avalon, my parents are bright but I certainly didn't expect them to help with my A-level physics homework. Or indeed any of my A-level homework.

At that level, if your friend's son doesn't understand something, he should ask the teacher, who should be happy to explain it to him.

MB, I found the maths to be the hardest part of the physics A-level (or certainly the bit I was most rusty on) because I didn't do maths A-level. I really liked that I could do English, History and Physics A-levels - don't think I would have done Physics if it meant having to do Maths as well.

oops! just realised i was responding to what you said 2hrs ago and the discussion's moved on since then

DH thinks it's mad to offer psych at A level and he studied it to Masters. Now has a job which is nothing to do with it.

At the potential school compulsory GCSEs are maths, English, English Lit, double award science, a humanity and a modern foreign language. Plus 2 other 'free' choices.

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