Physics Teacher Agency for Physics Education

In the field of middle and high school physics education, teachers must succeed in both “physics education” and “physics as education.” This is because the school classroom is not just a time for learning physics, but also a time for connecting physics to students’ lives “Right here Right now” as an education. Physics teachers are actively interpreting and reconstructing the field with students who change rapidly in society and creating the context of physics education. In this personal and social context, teacher agency is exerted.1) Teacher agency is not just the personal ability of individual teachers to implement policies sincerely or the policies promoted by higher institutions. Teacher agency as a change agent is achieved by creating an environment in which teachers can actively demonstrate their expertise with their own beliefs in a context that encompasses both the personal and social structural dimensions of teachers.2) In order to promote the emergence of physics teacher agency, educational administrative agencies should focus not only on promoting education policies that focus on the individual competencies of teachers, but also on creating a structural context around teachers and teacher networks as important agent in the development and implementation of education policies. The Korean Physical Society, which plays an important role in the development of physics education, needs to expand opportunities for participation in physics education by physics teachers to help expand the network of physics teachers, who are important actors in the network of physics education.