EUROPEAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY EUPEN 8th General Forum14. September 2006 Gent1 EPS & Educational Policies

EUROPEAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY EUPEN 8th General Forum14. September 2006 Gent2 Education (1985 – 2003) year old population at historic low upper secondary graduates are up in period stable or declining share of upper secondary graduates in S&T and and growing enrolment rates in tertiary education as well as S&E graduates relative to the population at the age of graduation for certain individual disciplines (mathematics and physical sciences) …this is not the case..

EUROPEAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY EUPEN 8th General Forum14. September 2006 Gent3

EUROPEAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY EUPEN 8th General Forum14. September 2006 Gent4

EUROPEAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY EUPEN 8th General Forum14. September 2006 Gent5

EUROPEAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY EUPEN 8th General Forum14. September 2006 Gent6 This requires action EPS educational policy! STEPS and EUPEN! and much more…. The ROSE data are based on questions, among them How interested are you in learning… Girls (%)Boys (%) Astrology and horoscopes and planets influencing life7038 Life and death and the human soul5630 Alternative therapies and their efficiency5720 Why we dream while we are sleeping8543 Ghosts and witches, and whether they may exist6735 Thought transference, mind-reading, sixth sense, etc.5824

EUROPEAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY EUPEN 8th General Forum14. September 2006 Gent7 EPS is concerned about this situation maintain and improve the quality of physics teaching strengthen educational research at all levels across Europe ensure rapid deployment of the results and best practices of educational research and experimentation establish regular contacts between educational researchers and the physics teaching community Mainstreaming (gender, minorities) to be given particular attention!

EUROPEAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY EUPEN 8th General Forum14. September 2006 Gent8 The European Physical Society welcomes the Bologna process and the creation of EHEA - providing scope for greater European cooperation and development in HE - benefiting both European and foreign students warns against overregulation of degrees and their component parts - stressing the need only for a general framework - “light touch regulation” recommends expression of learning outcomes and competencies in general terms without over prescribing each learning module stresses that physics learning is cumulative - it cannot be broken down into modules to be chosen completely free - in particular the early years of a physics degree will contain many compulsory modules necessary for later work

EUROPEAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY EUPEN 8th General Forum14. September 2006 Gent9 The three-level educational system at a bachelor, master, and doctoral level is prescribed by the Bologna process The European Physical Society recommends that Bachelor degrees in physics should have a large common content - to facilitate student mobility between universities and countries - during and after the bachelor program Masters degrees need to be more varied - involve specialization in particular areas of physics - or combinations of physics with related disciplines Doctoral degrees should not be modularized or expressed in specific learning outcomes/competencies, -except possibly for some minor components

EUROPEAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY EUPEN 8th General Forum14. September 2006 Gent10 EPS will  inform physics professors, lecturers and teachers of what is happening across Europe  promote the establishment of a European quality mark for bachelor degrees in physics [1] as quality mark for bachelor degrees to assure national or European regulators about the degree quality [1]  promote the dissemination of educational pilot projects in physics to further best-practice  endeavour to avoid inappropriate competition between funds for physics research and physics education research. [1] [1] EuroBachelor™

EUROPEAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY EUPEN 8th General Forum14. September 2006 Gent11