I have been teaching physics for 44 years and during that time I have taught many variations of IB physics after 10 years of the British A Level. I’ve only got a year and a half to go before I retire so this is the last time I will go through a syllabus change, so thought I would write something about it.

When I started teaching I used notes; I would go through the topic the week before basically writing the script to my lesson and would then have it in front of me in class. I found my notes the other day and it’s interesting to see that I have changed the way I explain physics very little; I still show how the conservation of momentum is a consequence of Newton’s laws and I still use electric braking as an example of electromagnetic induction - and this example is a bit more relevant now. In 44 years there has been little change in high school physics. When I studied physics at school, physicists were trying to find the isolated quark but they never found it. They did find the Higgs Boson but fusion power remains a dream. There have been huge advances in technology, however the physics behind these advances isn’t new.

After 10 years I abandoned the notes and went into freewheeling mode. The lessons ended up as a series of funny stories loosely linked by physics. 6 years ago I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease so had to think of a different way to teach. I mean that I couldn’t teach from the board anymore because I had Parkinson’s, not because I was diagnosed with it. The content didn’t change but now the students work their own way through the course guided by my activities rather than being shown everything by me.

Content

So what’s new this time? In terms of content, almost nothing. OK, some of the old optional material has been moved to the core, for example special relativity, rotational motion, thermodynamics and resonance. Also, some core topics have gone, like particle physics and capacitance. I don’t think we need to worry about content - unless you have never taught relativity, in which case you need to worry a bit. So the topics are pretty much the same but the way they are organised isn’t.

The animation below shows very roughly how the topics have been reorganised: quite different but very much the same.

We could discuss all day whether SHM should be under waves or particles, or whether particle physics should have been left in, but that would be pointless; the content has been decided.

It has been split into chunks grouped in themes. Why put different topics together?

• To make it more manageable.
• Showing how similar models are used in different examples makes understanding easier.
• People like making lists.

It is not done because this is the way it must be taught and students will not be examined on which topics are under which heading. I, for example, won't be teaching electric current before electric fields. Electric fields have a lot more connections to current than gravity. In fact electric and gravitational forces could not be more different; they are fundamentally different forces. The only connection they have is that they are modelled in the same way. I also won't be teaching special relativity after mechanics in the first year; I will do it at the end of the course.

The clue as to why the content has been arranged in this way can be found in the pages of the subject guide before the syllabus outline, these start off the same as the old guide with the learner profile etc. We then get into a much reduced but clearer section on the nature of science, the nature of physics, TOK and CAS. Then comes ATL (approaches to teaching and learning) and this is very different; the old guide focussed on the content and the new more on the pedagogy.

Approaches to teaching and learning

Hidden under the title experimental programme is this sentence "Students should therefore be encouraged to develop investigations to support their learning through open-ended inquiry with a focus on laboratory and fieldwork experiments, databases, simulations and modelling." This is something new. I have tried open-ended inquiry and have many examples of this approach on this website. It needs a lot of time and incredibly motivated students; I can't say my attempts have been entirely successful but you don't have to do the whole course this way.

The other thing that stands out is the use of the term conceptual understanding. The word conceptual was only used once in the old guide but 17 times in the new. The inclusion of "linking questions" is also related to this emphasis. With this in mind the topic rearrangement starts to make sense; electric and gravitational fields are physically different but conceptually similar.

Why do financial institutions employ the best physics students? Because they can solve problems! But what does that mean and why is it particularly the ability to solve physics problems? Let's look at an example.

Humphrey the camel walks at 2 m s^-1 on baked earth but only 1 m s^-1 in loose sand. Humphrey must travel from A to B as shown on the map below. What is the shortest time possible?

The first step is to understand the problem. Humphrey walks faster on the earth so should maximise the time spent walking on the earth. However if they spend too long on the earth the total distance is too big. There must be a minimum between 45° and 90°. During this stage we have been sketching possible routes and visualising the problem. Now we have to apply some physics, but we don't know any physics of camels and sand so we apply what we know about little red balls and write an equation for the time in terms of the angle. Then we can substitute values and plot a graph or use GeoGebra to plot the line and find the minimum.

Here is the solution

So we show this solution to the class and one bright student says they did it another way. Light will take the shortest route between A and B and the path of light can be calculated using Snell's law. Brilliant. They have used some seemingly unconnected bit of physics to solve the problem. Physically different conceptually similar. This is the sort of student that banks are looking for. So if this is what the future employers want then we should be encouraging the development of these skills in our students. Personally I don't think IB physics has been developing these skills to any degree. The problems are too easy, students need to solve Olympiad problems to be able to really develop problem-solving techniques. Most IB problems can be solved by students with very poor problem-solving skills; no diagram, poorly set out working and random scribbles often score full marks.

The ability to see connections is emphasised in the guide with the inclusion of linking questions. For example when dealing with Newton's universal law of gravitation we could mention that many other physical quantities are related by an inverse square relationship, such as the intensity of light from a point source. The problem with these links being introduced early in the course is that the student won't know enough about light yet to see the connection. However they might serve as some sort of a trailer, motivating students to find out more. They make more sense when seen in reverse. I recommend my students to read my textbook at the end of the course; then they can see the big picture with all the connections.

So the big difference is the focus on conceptual understanding and inquiry. For a lot of us, this is will not affect our teaching because we have been doing this for years. However, it's nice to know that we have been on the right track.

Internal Assessment

Another quite big change is the assessment criteria for the individual investigation. I find it much easier to use a horizontal grid to do the marking. When the old criteria first appeared I made a grid that became the unofficial way of applying the criteria so I have made one for the new criteria. The old report was supposed to be more like an article than a lab report but these criteria seem to be more in line with a classic lab report, no marks for communication or personal engagement.

The guide contains some further explanations but it's a bit early to go into the details now. Rest assured that we will have a whole load of examples and practice exercises ready on this website before you have to actually use these criteria.