Interactive Teaching Units in Physics

The concept of the interactive teaching unit first emerged in the late 1970s (Reid 1978; Johnstone and Reid 1979) arising from a major research project which was seeking to explore the development of attitudes relating to the themes covered in the study of chemistry. From this project a sound educational underpinning was developed (Johnstone and Reid 1981). Much later the use of interactive units has been extended to skills development social issues awareness and the applications of science subjects in real-life situations (Reid 1999; Clarkeburn et al. 2000; Lennon et al. 2002). Sets of units were developed in chemistry and biology and more recently a range of four teaching units in physics was developed under LTSN funding.