Diverse suggestions for improving physics teaching

A major emphasis in the article “Psychological insights for improved physics teaching ” is success in diversity by having teachers understand “students’ perspectives” or “mindsets.” Diversity should not be denied, but it cannot and should not be created by decoding students’ mindsets. Consider the authors’ description: “the conventional, if erroneous, wisdom that the population can be divided into math-brained and non-math-brained people.” It is wisdom, but it is not erroneous. We’ve all seen our children or other students who are one or the other.

A math-brained student who does not also possess a great spark of curiosity will not transform into a physicist, no matter how good the teacher is. If the curiosity is there, then for all but the brilliant ones, a lot of hard work lies ahead. I speak from my own experience of quitting physics three times at different levels but succeeding in the fourth attempt. Teachers can psychoanalyze their students’ mindsets forever, or imagine some intervention, but that doesn’t make them better teachers or produce more physicists.

For some, the curiosity required for physics was stimulated by the science fiction of the 1950s, Star Trek in the 1960s, and the US space program of the 1970s; that was before smartphones, video games, and the overdone special effects in science fiction movies today.

I submit that improvement in student success in physics will come not from analyses of diversity and mindset but from the inherent pleasure of mathematics for those so brained and, for all, the curiosity often stimulated in the labs—one place where a good teacher can make a difference.