The purpose of this page is to house posts that are inspired by the book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics by Peter Liljedahl. I first started implementing some ideas around winter of 2022 after seeing enough posts on Twitter. In early 2023 along with Marta Stoeckel and Martha Lietz we ran a book study for physics teachers that included over 100 educators across the nation (and a few other countries!) In the summer of 2023 I got to attend an in-person workshop led by Peter that really made so much of the work make sense!
My writing launched when I started by “Science of Learning Physics” series back in 2021. When I started diving into Building Thinking Classrooms I was really frustrated when I discovered the huge camp that believes everything about the book us unfounded and harmful to student outcomes. From what I’ve encountered both integrating ideas as well as encountering a workshop with Peter is that there is still plenty of direct instruction happening in BTC, and much of BTC is, indeed supported by concepts from cognitive science research. It is my hope in my posts to not only demonstrate how to use the methods in a physics class, but also how it connects to cognitive theories.
Physics.Teacher.Momma. 