Conveners
Physics Teacher Education
- Alberto Stefanel
Physics Teacher Education
- Valentina Bologna
Physics Teacher Education
- Vira Bondar (ETHZ)
Physics Teacher Education
- Kalliopi Meli (University of Patras)
Physics Teacher Education
- Lars-Jochen Thoms (University of Konstanz)
Description
Physics Teacher Education
From preparing future physics teachers to building physics teachers community.
Out-of-field teaching has been shown to negatively impact teachers’ wellbeing and retention in the profession. This paper investigates the teacher self-efficacy of physics teachers alongside the extent to which they feel they are out-of-field. A theoretical framework of social cognitive theory places teachers’ capabilities, agency, and ability to develop at the centre of the study. Data was...
This study examines the negotiation of epistemological approaches between out-of-field teachers (with training in biology) and in-field physics teachers as they engage in an argumentative activity on measurement uncertainty. The activity was designed along the lines of the Knowledge Integration theory so that the biology teachers' disciplinary knowledge can serve them in constructing knowledge...
The representation of physical concepts is essential to support teaching and to activate learning in primary school. Investigating how future teachers represent the physical concepts has great importance. A research was carried out on concepts of force representations of 274 prospective teachers, enrolled in the Primary Education Sciences degrees. Rubrics were designed and used to analyze...
In this paper, we present a proposal for an evaluation rubric for the evaluation of preparations for physics lessons. We describe the method of creating an evaluation rubric and its subsequent use in practice. A well-conducted lesson by the teacher supposes quality preparation for the lesson. Therefore, we believe that it is important that teacher students are able to develop thoughtful...
In high school teacher education, although work on didactic units for teaching the curriculum of science disciplines is common, they rarely include multidisciplinary STEAM viewpoint. In this project, we show the design and implementation of a teaching/learning sequence (TLS) to show STEAM projects in High School with a project-based learning approach, with students of the Master's Degree in...
We present the findings of the study of teachers’ ability to interpret student explanations and respond to them productively. We use the framework of the content knowledge for teaching energy (CKT-E), specifically its component common for all physics topics – the Tasks of Teaching to analyse teachers’ responses to a survey that asks them to comment on student answers and explanations for a...
Physics teachers need to understand subject matter knowledge tailored specifically to teaching. It can be reached by extending the teachers’ background with in-service training activities and professional development. We report the results of a recent experience involving some Physics teachers engaged in a profound revision of their Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). This allowed...
It is widely know by now that Critical Thinking (CT) is a skill that students should obtain during their education. Especially in the climate change debate young people need to distinguish between facts and ‘fake news’ because the effects of climate change concern them in particular. CT skills are measured in general-domain but also assessed for topics in the physics context, hence for...
For many years quantum physics has been introduced in European secondary schools. However, quantum physics, and even more quantum technology, is not sufficiently part of present physics teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). For this reason, the QTEdu pilot project ‘Quantum Technology PCK for teachers’ wants to put together the expertise of several educational researchers in order to...
The "Flag Person Framework", structuring collaborative reflection on practice, was introduced in a national network of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) to support physics teachers implementing “Deliberation Labs” to increase students’ agency in the lab. We examined how PLC leaders perceived, as teachers and as leaders, the affordances and limitations of the "Flag Person” framework. The...
We are presenting a framework that supports teaching assistants in their teaching duties during exercise classes and that fosters their professional teaching development. The framework relies on the concept of Communities of Practice and combines pedagogy together with strategies and support for social interaction. We are discussing the challenges of this novel approach and its positive...
We report on the initial findings of a pilot study from a larger project investigating the teaching and learning of spatial/temporal scales in science. Pre-service science teachers from physics and biology were interviewed over Zoom while completing a ranking task for objects ranging from a proton to animal cells to the Universe. A phenomenographic analysis was carried out to determine the...
Astronomy is disappearing from Italian high-schools. The latest reform of the school removed its teaching from the upper secondary curriculum but, nevertheless, fundamental contents about Astronomy are required by the Italian National Standards. ATENA, a training course for in-service high-school teachers aims to investigate the possibility of introducing Physics concepts by the means of...
Physics undergraduates undertaking a ‘teaching in schools’ module describe how their skills, perceptions of physics teaching and intentions to train as a teacher are affected by their school experiences.
In this research, we used a traditional theoretical framework for physics teachers’ training as a starting point to develop a new research instrument (online questionnaire) for exploring teachers’ conceptions on the epistemology and pedagogy of thermodynamics. Our goal was to validate the original framework to make informed decisions on the design of future training programs based on teachers’...
Teacher collaboration has been promoted as essential to supporting teachers’ learning and motivation. A key feature of models of teacher collaboration is that they support teachers in changing their classroom practices with the aim of enhancing student learning. This study reports on the design and implementation of a novel approach to teacher collaboration - the SAMRII model (Solve,...
Fostering “digital competences” is an important aspect of university education for pre-service physics teachers. Therefore, a research-based seminar on the effective use of digital media in physics teaching was developed, implemented and evaluated. Our analyses indicate that the seminar leads to an increase in motivation to use digital media in physics lessons. The findings are the basis for...
The Institute of Physics (IOP) has been leading rich programmes of professional development (PD) across school in UK and Ireland for over a decade. The need to support and develop non-specialist teachers of physics subject matter knowledge (SMK) and pedagogical subject knowledge (PCK) has been a focus of the IOP. During the lockdowns our style, means of delivery and content had to quickly...
Teacher training institutions are currently facing the great challenge of having to integrate the promotion of digital teaching competencies into established training programmes. To do this, it must first be possible to name the sub-competencies to be implemented. The aim of this research is the transfer and adaptation of the German DiKoLAN framework for the training programmes at the Thurgau...
