Cultural Perspectives on Teacher Education

Populations that are underrepresented in physics generally are even more severely underrepresented among US physics teachers. Based on national data from the American Institute of Physics (AIP), 95\% of physics teachers are White/non-Hispanic, about 1.5\% are Hispanic, and approximately another 1.5\% African-American. While 25\% of our nation's African-American and Hispanic students now take physics in high school, they are very unlikely to have a role model, of similar race and ethnicity, teaching their physics classes. PhysTEC is making an effort to find and disseminate successful models for attracting more underrepresented minority students to high school physics teaching. This panel discussion, focusing on cultural perspectives on teacher education, will feature faculty from Minority Serving Institutions, which educate almost 60\% of underrepresented minorities who get college degrees in the US, and individuals who have taught high school physics in areas with a dense minority population.