What it takes to be a good physics teacher

I was recruited as a lecturer to the School of Physics, USM since 2003. Since then I have been deeply involved in the teaching of undergraduate level physics courses. The courses I have taught include mechanics (the ‘101’ physics course, which is an almost universally a course any undergraduate level physics student must take), modern physics, thermodynamics, linear algebra and calculus, and statistical mechanics. I am not only a physics instructor but also a mathematic teacher. Teaching physics and mathematics could be full of fun as well as challenges. Public regard learning physics a daunting endeavour. In fact to explain physics is even more so. Richard Feynman[1], the legendry physics Nobel laureate and great physics teacher used to say “… if I could explain it to the average person, I wouldn’t have been worth the Nobel Prize”. As a physicist and a physics teacher, my core belief is, physics and mathematics are comprehensible. Ironically, many physics students still regard otherwise.

In my opinion, a physics teacher who can make physics comprehensible requires a few qualities: he / she must master the effective techniques in delivering ideas, the knowledge of the subject matter, and to have a passion to deliver the first two. You can’t be a good physics teacher if you lack any of these. For example, P. A. M. Dirac, one of the most important physicists in history and whose contribution to physics is at par with that of Einstein, is said to be the most boring physics teacher. He used the most economical and concise mathematical language to lecture physics to students, but never bother to elaborate further in plain language. Most were left in a state of confusion when Dirac left the class. As physicist, Dirac has the most profound insight for mathematical beauty in a physics theory, but he has not the passion to deliver what he apprehended to grass-root level physics students. On the other hand, one can never teach beyond the level of his understanding. If that is how much one knows, that’s about how much one can teach. In the teacher-centered setting, this would mean a good physics teacher is logically impossible if he / she know too little of the subject matter.

In practice, many physics teachers merely spoon feed formulas which are to be blindly memorised by students, and recycle past year questions in the final exams. The level of comprehension of the core ideas are not usually tested rigorously. In many instances, exams mostly require students to vomit the model answers as memorised. The ability to score the highest grades in physics exams is rarely translated into a reasonable comprehension of the complete idea behind what they have memorised. In my personal opinion, the best way to show whether learning has truly taken place is to demonstrate the ability to apply the knowledge content in research projects, and to correctly explain them in such a manner that others can comprehend them.  It is also in this spirit Feynman defined a person to have truly understood a physics concept.

        Teaching physics to a class of undergraduate students finally boils down to how to convey a foreign, and often abstract, concept to the audiences. To achieve this, various effective techniques and tricks can be innovated. Throughout the last few years as a physics teacher, I have innovated various tricks and techniques to make undergraduate physics a comprehensible subject. Along the way, I feel deeply that to deliver good teaching I must know my subject matter well. Not only that. Genuine motivation from within is also a mandatory fuel to make me stayed innovative. Innovative methods in teaching may be merely strategies or convenient tools dressed up by fancy technologies. But what essentially drives the implementation of these tricks is personal passion.

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[1] For the wonderful life of Richard Feynman, see the bibliography by James Gleick (1992). Genius. Vintage Books. Feynman’s three-volume Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964) published by Addison-Wesley is a legacy that has strongly influenced three generation of physicists since the 1960s.