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Event |
Workshop
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| Date: | Wednesday December 4th, 2013 | ||||||||
| Time: | 4:00 pizza, 4:30 - 6:00 physics, 6:00+ informal socializing at Sarah's Bistro - two blocks away. Everyone is invited for all or part. | ||||||||
| Place: | Toronto, Danforth CTI, 800 Greenwood Ave., Rm A76 | ||||||||
| Topic: | Roberta Tevlin, Chandra Boon and Chris Meyer present Girls and Physics | ||||||||
| Materials: | Link to materials, Recommended TED Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend.html | ||||||||
Girls are underrepresented in physics at almost all levels of study and practice. Many fields have closed the gender gap in recent decades but physics has seen limited progress. Chris will share results from physics education research and results from an analysis of his students' survey data. Chandra will explain Carol Dweck’s Mindset framework and the importance of teaching a growth mindset to girls as a component of physics pedagogy. Roberta will describe the steps that she and others at her school took to increase the percentage of girls in their enriched MaST program (Math, Science, Technology). In just 4 years they went from 18% girls entering to 46%. Please bring your thoughts, ideas, stories and experiences to share.
Roberta has been teaching physics in Toronto for 25 years. She is rather fanatical about modern physics and Physics Education Research and spends her spare time looking for ways to combine them to make high school physics more exciting and inviting. She has given workshops to this end around special relativity, general relativity, particle physics quantum uncertainty and entanglement. She is a consultant for the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical and the coordinator of PI’s Teacher Network. In her spare spare time she plays New Orleans jazz at Grossman’s Tavern in Toronto.
Chris Meyer completed a Specialist Degree in Physics at the University of Toronto, but didn’t really get this physics stuff until he began teaching. From his experiences “teaching” physics at A. Y. Jackson (North York), the Ontario Science Centre, Rosedale Heights (Toronto) and now York Mills C. I. (North York) he came to realize that the teaching techniques he was raised with were not adequate. After attending a lecture by Edward Redish at the University of Toronto, and becoming acquainted for the first time with Physics Education Research, things began to change. Now Chris gives presentations across southern Ontario encouraging teachers to stop teaching.
Chandra Boon has been teaching for 9 years, the last 6 of which have been spent teaching math, general science, and physics at Branksome Hall, an all-girls school in Toronto. Chandra began teaching after earning a BSc in Physics and an MSc in Biophysics. She is passionate about interdisciplinary learning and aims to inspire a love of learning in her students by incorporating interdisciplinary connections in the classroom. It was after reading both Mindset and Self Theories by Carol Dweck that Chandra began using the mindset framework to increase students’ enjoyment of learning in math and physics, specifically when faced with academic challenges. Chandra has led workshops for teachers in the US, Canada, and South Africa, and has recently begun a flex-time PhD in Education at OISE/UT.
If you are coming please email Chris Meyer so we have enough pizza and pop at 4:00.
Afterwards: Please join us for informal socializing at Sarah's Bistro - two blocks away.