Many physics educators seek to improve their courses but feel constrained by traditional post-secondary structures and norms. Instructors often perceive a false tension between fostering inclusive learning environments and maintaining the rigor central to the discipline. The Effective Practices for Physics Programs (EP3) Guide synthesizes decades of research-based recommendations for improving physics education. However, it offers limited guidance on how to integrate these diverse recommendations into a coherent, course-level approach—a responsibility that falls to individual instructors, whose graduate training prepared them primarily as researchers rather than as educators. This paper begins by motivating and introducing the Practicing Professionalism Framework (PPF), a course design framework developed in alignment with EP3 recommendations that encourages development of professional skills in a way that connects students’ interests and values to the broader physics community. We present the PPF in sufficient detail to enable motivated faculty to adopt and adapt it as a research-informed tool for aligning their course design with both their professional values and instructional goals. Next we present the PPF implemented in two very different instructional contexts, demonstrating how the PPF can offer a structured pathway for making courses more inclusive while preserving disciplinary rigor. We conclude with observations across the two case studies.
Baylor et al. (2026) studied this question.