Physics education news
Despite this being a relatively quiet summer in Europe for physics education conferences, the Physics Education Division (PED) has been very active in promoting physics education research.
EPS sponsored workshop at GIREP-EPEC
A Workshop on Teacher Shortages and the Preparation of School Leavers for Further Study
The European Physical Society is pleased to announce sponsorship of a workshop at the forthcoming conference of the International Research Group on Physics Teaching [GIREP-EPEC], 6-10 July 2015, Wroclaw, Poland to address the issue of teacher shortages and preparation of school leavers for further study in physics. There is growing evidence that these are problems across most, if not all, of Europe and the aim of the workshop is to try to gather that evidence together and stimulate further discussion and collaboration. Ten travel bursaries of up to 200 Euros are available to …
The state of physics in the United Kingdom
The Institute of Physics [IOP] in the United Kingdom [UK] has just released a report detailing a wealth of statistical data about staffing levels in UK physics departments between 2003-2004 and 2011-2012. Higher education in the UK has expanded enormously in the last 20 years or so and this data captures some of that expansion in the growth of staff numbers. The headline figures show that staffing levels in higher education have increased by 21% since 2003-2004 with physics staff increasing by 20%. This is quite impressive given that a lot of expansion has occurred in the newer universities that do not teach physics and at the same time a number of physics departments have closed…
