Maggie Mahmood

For More Information

• Illinois Physics and Secondary Schools Partnership Program Website

Biography

Maggie Mahmood is a physics education researcher. She began her work in the Physics Education Research (PER) group at University of Illinois as an academic professional in August 2019. Over the past seven years Maggie has helped lead the development and expansion of the Illinois Physics and Secondary Schools Partnership program (IPaSS), that grew from a small pilot community to a statewide network serving approximately 70 teachers via support from a multi-year NSF-funded project. She also spearheaded the design and development of an online, credit-bearing masters degree program for practicing high school physics teachers that supports both teacher advancement and long-term programmatic sustainability. In addition to her work with in-service teachers, she contributes to the department's goal of fortifying the pipeline for high school physics teacher development. In this vein, she co-leads the department's Learning Assistant program for the introductory physics courses' labs, co-advises an undergraduate organization for future high school physics teachers, and is Co-PI on an NSF-funded Robert Noyce capacity-building initiative focused on strengthening pathways for engineering undergraduates into physics teaching careers.

Prior to coming to Illinois, Maggie was a high school physics teacher for eight years at Codman Academy in Dorchester, MA, where she served as science department chair, and The Park School of Baltimore, where she served as physics team lead.

Maggie completed both her M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics at Illinois, where her dissertation examined high school physics teachers' instructional reform efforts in the community of practice context, with emphasis on the role of affect in teacher learning and professional growth.

Professional Highlights

• Developed and scaled NSF-funded high school physics teacher professional development program (Illinois Physics and Secondary Schools Partnership Program - IPaSS) to 70 Illinois high school teachers over seven years (active project)
• Designed and developed an online, credit-bearing MS in Teaching of Physics for in-service high school physics teachers to support teacher advancement and long-term programmatic sustainability (active project)
• Engages in capacity-building work to strengthen U of I's physics teacher development pipeline: Co-runs the department's Learning Assistant (LA) program for introductory physics laboratories, co-advises an undergraduate organization for future high school physics teachers, and is co-PI on the NSF-funded Robert Noyce capacity-building initiative focused on strengthening pathways for students into physics teaching careers (active project)

Research Statement

Maggie Mahmood's research focuses on the role of affect in physics teacher learning and instructional reform, particularly within the Communities of Practice framework. Specifically, her work uses a blend of qualitative and quantitative methods to consider the mechanisms by which responsive teacher professional development designs, activities, and facilitatory moves can encourage durable instructional reform across a variety of high school physics teaching contexts. Her past work has focused on comfort-building moves and facilitatory structures in PD that support teacher engagement in collaborative physics sensemaking, attending especially to out-of-field physics teachers. More recently, Maggie has explored new techniques for measurement and evaluation of teachers' instructional shifts within a responsive PD program. A current project seeks to understand the interplay between teachers' affect and decision-making in uptake of AI tools.

Research Interests

• Physics Education Research

Selected Articles in Journals

• Talafian, H., Lundsgaard, M., Mahmood, M. S., Kuo, E., & Stelzer, T. J. (2025). Teachers’ experiences with taking an open-ended approach in teaching labs in high school physics classes. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 21(1), 010140.
• Talafian, H., Lundsgaard, M., Mahmood, M., Shafer, D., Stelzer, T., & Kuo, E. (2025). Responsive professional development: A facilitation approach for teachers' development in a physics teaching community of practice. Teaching and Teacher Education, 153, 104812
• Mahmood, M. S., Talafian, H., Shafer, D., Kuo, E., Lundsgaard, M., & Stelzer, T. (2024). Navigating socio‐emotional risk through comfort‐building in physics teacher professional development: A case study. Journal of Research in Science Teaching
• Shafer, D., Mahmood, M. S., & Stelzer, T. (2021). Impact of broad categorization on statistical results: How underrepresented minority designation can mask the struggles of both Asian American and African American students. Physical Review Physics Education Research, 17(1), 010113

Pending Articles

• Mahmood, M.S., and Talafian, H. (2026). Measuring Physics Teacher Instructional Changes in the Context of a Responsive Professional Development. Proceedings of the International Society of the Learning Sciences. (In press).