Millikan award lecture: Students of physics—Listeners, observers, or collaborative participants in physics scientific practices?

Abstract

This article is a written version of my acceptance speech upon receiving the Millikan Medal at the 2014 Summer AAPT meeting. In the talk I shared an approach to learning and teaching physics that engages students learning introductory physics in the processes that physicists use to construct physics concepts, physical quantities, and equations, as well as to solve problems. This article describes the origins of the method, its characteristic features, research on its implementation, and available resources.