When qualifying as a secondary school physics teacher in England, the statutory guidance is generic and very little subject-specific detail is offered. There is a lack of a clear, shared understanding of the subject-specific attributes that newly-qualified physics teachers are expected to have. This exploratory study reports the findings of a questionnaire that asked various stakeholders—including physics teachers, trainees and teacher trainers—to identify what they regard as the attributes of a 'good' physics teacher. From our analysis we present a set of attributes of a good physics teacher and consider how these may be grouped into themes that could provide a way to explore these expectations. We pay particular attention to the subject-specific, and consider how our findings align with the existing literature base.

Background: There are longstanding concerns about the recruitment, training and retention of physics teachers in England. The national frameworks relating to pre-service teacher education provide little subject-specific detail. In addition, the various professionals that pre-service physics teachers encounter may have differing views about what it means to be a physics teacher. A lack of clarity and potentially inconsistent messages about what is expected of them may cause challenges for pre-service physics teachers as they form their professional identity.

Purpose: To sample the views about physics teachers and physics teaching held by various stakeholders.

Sample: A cross-sectional sample (n=16) consisting of pre-service physics teachers, mentors in schools, university-based teacher educators and undergraduate physics/engineering lecturers.

Design and methods: Semi-structured interviews with stakeholders. Thematic analysis of the transcripts was carried out to identify dominant perspectives.

Results:  We identified four dominant perspectives. The first two related to physics teaching, physics teachers and status. Physics teaching was viewed as not being the best career choice for someone with a physics degree. However, in schools, physics teachers are often seen as having a higher status in schools than other teachers. The third perspective highlighted the necessity of strong physics-specific subject knowledge to be a good teacher, but also that strong subject knowledge can create challenges for teachers. The final perspective identified that the emphasis on discipline-specific vs generic aspects of being a teacher may vary across the contexts in which pre-service teachers may find themselves.

Implications and Suggestions: We suggest that pre-service physics teachers need support negotiating some of the issues identified in the findings. The scarcity of physics teachers leads to a corresponding risk of isolation; beginning teachers need to be aware of the challenges that isolated physics teachers may face and find ways to mitigate this. With respect to the subject-specific aspects of being a physics teacher and the balance between generic and physics-specific knowledge, more explicit attention needs to be paid to the knowledge-base required by physics teachers, acknowledging and validating the knowledge about physics teaching and learning from academic research alongside the more practical knowledge that pre-service teachers need (or at least believe they need). Additionally, we suggest that attention is needed to the process of knowledge transformation whereby knowledge from physics and science education research can be transformed into forms that are useful and accessible to pre-service physics teachers in order to make their practice more research-informed.

Practical work is widely seen as an integral part of school science. Research and teacher guidance have tended to consider practical work in science, rather than in individual science subjects or topics. This study used a questionnaire of selected- and open-response items to probe the views and reasoning of a sample of 43 pre-service teachers in England about the considerations that influence their use of practical work. Responses indicated a strongly positive view of the value of practical work to support a range of learning outcomes. A majority of respondents thought that the usefulness of practical work varies across topics due to differences in what can be directly observed and in potential to challenge learners' ideas. Responses showed awareness of the key role of practical work in linking observations and ideas, but also highlighted challenges in applying broad principles about practical work to content-specific examples and a limited awareness of the range of possible types of practical activity. The study supports the view that researchers and advocates of practical work should engage with issues at a smaller grain size than hitherto in order to gain a better understanding of teachers' decision-making and enable more effective classroom practices.

This qualitative, questionnaire and interview-based study explores how pre-service physics teachers think about the role that mathematics plays in the teaching and learning of physics at university and school level and whether these views change during their pre-service teacher education. Many of the pre-service teachers were aware of the complex relationship between these two subjects at university level, noting that success in mathematics can often mask a lack of conceptual understanding in physics and that there can be a disconnect between the physics and mathematical aspects of undergraduate courses. At school level, many stressed the importance of a focus on conceptual understanding and that technical competence in mathematics lessons does not always transfer to physics lessons. Almost all the pre-service physics teachers changed their views during the year, often in response to their classroom experiences. As they became more attuned to the difficulties students faced with respect to the mathematical challenges involved in learning physics, many took a more pragmatic position that balanced the role of mathematics in physics with acceptance that they must respond to student needs. We suggest that these changing views can be framed in terms of two re-orientations. A disciplinary re-orientation where the role that mathematics plays in order to be successful in physics is reassessed, and a pedagogical re-orientation that attends to pragmatic, teaching considerations. We recommend that direct attention to the role of mathematics in school physics should be an integral part of pre-service physics teacher education in order to encourage these re-orientations.