Lessons Learned and Unlearned: A Lifelong Journey with ‘Active Learning’ as a Constant Companion

My lifelong journey from post-graduate student to retired physics professor has been very rewarding, especially with active learning as my constant companion. This paper discusses key milestones in progressing from a ‘sage on the stage’ to a ‘guide on the side’. The journey from ‘teacher-centered’ traditional lecturing to ‘student-centered’ active learning involved a very long and winding path, with several missteps along the way. To successfully navigate such a path required a clear bearing and a good compass. In my case the ‘bearing’ was the conviction that active learning was an effective way of teaching, and the ‘compass’ was physics education research, which I used to guide me in determining the efficacy (or otherwise) of my active learning interventions. Active learning is an education philosophy that is best shared, with students and with other teachers. As a member of UNESCO’s Asian Physics Education Network (ASPEN), I was able, along with colleagues, to introduce active learning to many physics teachers throughout Asia via hands-on, minds-on, active learning workshops. With the assistance of UNESCO, I helped to develop a 5-day, full-immersion, teacher-training program for academics and high school teachers. The program was called ‘Active Learning in Optics and Photonics’ (ALOP). The ALOP teaching guides were originally written in English, but have been translated into French, Spanish, Arabic, and several other languages. Between 2004 and 2019, there have been 35 ALOP workshops in the developing countries of Asia, Africa, Central and South America, and Eastern Europe. Workshop examples are presented in this paper.