Position statement - what is the purpose of teaching conceptual physics?

The purpose of a first-time physics class is NOT to cover content!  It's to build community through the shared challenge of understanding how the world works.

Many of your students will never see physics again.  For these folks, I don't care if five years down the line they remember how only the net force can be set equal to ma, or if they know the difference between acceleration and velocity.  (They might remember - I've heard course alumni misstate a physics concept, and their friends correct them.  But they might not, and it doesn't matter.) 

I care whether they had a good experience in the class, such that their impression of my class at a reunion will be similar to their impression of their JV baseball experience.  That they bonded with their classmates over a shared and worthy goal.  That they found support - both from me and from their classmates - when they struggled, and that they gave such support when their classmates needed it.  That they gained experience working through struggle without despair.  That they learned what academic success feels like, and how to celebrate success while still "acting like you've been there before," and how to celebrate their classmates' successes as well as their own.  These are the most important outcomes of physics class by far.  It's why we are in school to begin with.

In terms of physics itself, I care whether my students develop respect for science, for evidence-based reasoning, such that they know how to stand up to those who reject science in pursuit of a political agenda.  I care that they understand what constitutes experimental evidence, such that a pseudoscience peddler showing a graph with merely two ill-gotten data points is laughed out of the room.

Interestingly, I find that these science-specific goals follow on from the experiential goals.  In a class with a cutthroat every-student-for-themself culture, the one who stands up against intellectual dishonesty is ganged up on as a goody-two-shoes nerd.  In a class with a positive and supportive culture, they stand with each other.

Some of your students will take an advanced physics course, either in high school or college.  (You will have done more to inspire them to continue by building class culture than by covering any particular physics topic.)  These students will be well served by the skills you've taught them; more importantly, they'll know how to be the leaders in their next class, passing along that positive and supportive culture.

In my next post, I'll address an important question about content in conceptual physics, about how to adjust your course when you lose the first quarter of the school year to "remote learning" <derisive spit>.  And certainly if you come to the Conceptual Physics Summer Institute I'll model some ideas about teaching physics online (because the institute is being conducted online!).  Nevertheless, I can't emphasize enough - your students' experience in the course is so much more important than any content coverage or delivery.  If you do nothing but play pokemon with your conceptual class for nine weeks of remote learning <spit>, you will still be able to provide a rigorous, effective physics experience to your class when they return to school.  Even if you only cover 3/4 or 1/2 of the expected content.