School-University Collaboration and Teachers’ Professional Development

Teachers’ professional development is a central theme in Physics Education Research. Building on a long tradition of collaborative research between schools and universities within the community of the Italian “Scientific Degrees Plan”, and in cooperation with the broader physics education community, we identified research questions relevant to envisioning future perspectives about teachers’ needs, the strategies and methods to adopt, and the challenges teachers face. Starting from these questions, participants in the 4th World Conference on Physics Education have been engaged in an open workshop, prepared through a participatory process, to share and reflect on common concerns. The workshop highlighted several significant dimensions to guide future reflection: use of laboratories and technologies, the development of mentoring and community of practices, teacher education on interdisciplinary content, and conceptual paths in both classical and modern physics. In this paper, we report on this community reflection and offer perspectives for future work in this topical area of physics education research.