2-1. Should physics be a required course of study in high school? In what form? What does education research suggest about this question?
2-2. Physics training is supposed to make people think. How do we develop scientific reasoning in the physics course? For example, proportional reasoning, controlling variables, developing hypotheses, analyzing graphs and data, recognizing inferences, and so on.
2-3. Should the focus of effort be the introductory course or the course for prospective high school teachers? Why?
2-4. Which teachers' conceptions interfere with the way students read nontechnical texts with subjects in physics and in what way do they interfere?
2-5. Why do teachers tell themselves they want to tell students how science works and then when in the classroom just teach results of science?
2-6. What does the research suggest about how to get students to accept that there is a contradiction between students' internal models? How can this be used in the classroom? (Some of this was discussed in the McDermott lecture: see the Conference Proceedings.)
2-7. How large a role does fear of mathematics, or lack of ability of mathematics play in student success or failure in physics?