PUM Program Elements

Work Plan and Timeline

To achieve the goals of PUM we will:

• September 2007: Bring together an experienced Design and Research (D&R) Team to develop five PUM modules for middle school and Physics First and assessment instruments to research their effects on student learning, acquisition of scientific abilities and teachers' content knowledge and PCK. The five modules are likely to involve motions and forces, energy, matter, and electrostatics.
• November 2007: Select an Advisory Board that will help provide direction and monitor progress of project. We have identified 5 members of the board.
• December 2007. Develop modules for middle school and Physics First by revising and enriching existing ALG activities. Adapt the whole ALG for honors physics.
• Spring 2008. Pilot test two of these modules by Master teachers. Master teachers are 7 teachers who use the ISLE curriculum and will be members of the D&R Team. They will provide feedback that we will incorporate into these and the remaining 3 modules.
• Spring 2008. Develop formative assessment activities that will provide continual feedback to the D&R Team, teachers, and to the students about learning of physics and mathematics knowledge and process abilities. Some of these activities plus standardized tests will be used for summative evaluation.
• Spring 2008. Select new schools for the PUM curriculum implementation for the second year. Work with 7-10 new districts to find about 15 new teachers. The selection of schools will include at least 2 alternative schools who teach exclusively to underserved students. Also, select schools for a control group.
• Summer 2008. A full set of modules to be fully piloted in middle schools and Physics First classes will be ready as well as the ALG for honors physics. We will articulate the components of activities for different grade bands and mathematics involved.
• Summer 2008. A professional development system for those who will use the curriculum in the future will be created. It will use the instructor version of the ALG as a base and include development of the web-based resources to teachers, ways to share information among participating teachers and students, and showcase teacher and student work.
• Summer 2008. New teachers (10 out of the 15 mentioned above) will be trained during a two and a half-day workshop to implement the curriculum.
• Fall 2008-Spring 2009. Piloting and assessing a full year of PUM Honors Physics in at least two high school classes in year 2. We will not modify the ALG as much as we will for middle schools and Physics First but will use appropriate activities presently part of the ALG. We will assess the results. At the same time, we will pilot and assess middle school and physics first modules. The level of preparation of participating teachers will vary.
• Fall 2007 - Fall 2009. Development and refinement of the assessment tools that will measure effectiveness and impact of PUM modules, including research on student learning and teacher learning and enactment of curriculum (ongoing through the project).
• Fall 2007 - Fall 2009. During the implementation of the project we will be collecting information and analyzing the implementation of the project. With feedback from the field we will write a Curriculum and Implementation Development Plan to be completed by summer of 2009

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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant DRL-0733140. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).