Chapter 11: Recruiting Future Physics Teachers Through a Field-Based Summer Enrichment Program

The United States’ shortage of well-qualified physics teachers is a crisis at the national scale. With more students than ever enrolling in high school physics courses (White & Tesfaye, 2014), the demand for excellent instructors is skyrocketing. Alarmingly, secondary physics teachers are less likely than teachers of nearly any other subject area to have a degree in the discipline they teach: physics ~40%, chemistry ~40%, biology ~70%, mathematics ~70%, social science and humanities ~75% (Meltzer, Plisch, & Vokos, 2012). A landscape in which less than half of physics teachers have obtained a degree in this field—especially when coupled with the record number of students taking physics at the secondary level—is extremely worrisome and bodes ill for the United States’s future scientific literacy. A strong foundation in science in general, and physics in particular, are widely recognized as critical preparation for participation in our knowledge and technology driven economy (National Academy of Sciences, 2007).