Dr. Shulamit Kapon (Shuly) is an associate professor of physics education at the Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, where she leads the physics education track. Shuly serves one of associate editors of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching.
She was trained as a physicist at the Technion (B.A. cum laude and M.Sc.), as a physics education researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science (M.Sc. and Ph.D., recipient of the Feinberg Graduate School Dean’s Prize for Outstanding Ph.D. Students), and as a learning scientist at the University of California Berkeley (Postdoc). She was also a physics teacher for many years, teaching gifted students in accelerated classes, mainstream students preparing for the Israeli matriculation exams in physics, struggling students in special classes, adult students at the Technion pre-academic center, and in-service teachers through the National Center of Physics Teachers at the Weizmann Institute of Science. This experience constantly feeds into her research and academic teaching.
Shuly believes that physics and mathematics at the secondary school level as well as the introductory undergraduate level can be within the reach and interest of a larger pool of learners than they are today, and that research in physics and mathematics education can (and should) play a central role in achieving this goal. Motivated by this belief she leads innovative curriculum design and leads the Technion’s preservice and in-service physics teacher education. Her work with preservice and in-service physics teachers aims to empower teachers and nurture their competencies and self-efficacy to practice teaching as a design and facilitation of learning and become life-long-learners.
Her current research interests have two main foci: (1) Sensemaking and reasoning processes in physics, with physics, and at the interface of physics with other STEM disciplines. (2) The appropriation of scientific practices and habits of mind, where she studies how individuals learn to participate in scientific practice while interacting with others (teachers, mentors, peers) and appropriate scientific practices and habits of mind for their own purposes. Recently she became very interested in how social and cultural features interact with this process.
Shuly’s research has been funded by the Israel Science Foundation, the European Community, The Israeli Ministry of Education, and The Trump Family Foundation.
Contact
Dr. Shulamit Kapon, Associate Professor of Physics Education
Email: skapon@technion.ac.il
Phone: +972-73-378-3110 (office), +972-54-6727522 (mobile)
Address: Faculty of Education in Science and Technology, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Technion City, Haifa 3200003, Israel