Promoting Conceptual Development in Physics Teacher Education: Cognitive-Historical Reconstruction of Electromagnetic Induction Law

In teaching physics, the history of physics offers fruitful starting points for designing instruction. I introduce here an approach that uses historical cognitive processes to enhance the conceptual development of pre-service physics teachers’ knowledge. It applies a method called cognitive-historical approach, introduced to the cognitive sciences by Nersessian (Cognitive Models of Science. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp. 3–45, 1992). The approach combines the analyses of actual scientific practices in the history of science with the analytical tools and theories of contemporary cognitive sciences in order to produce knowledge of how conceptual structures are constructed and changed in science. Hence, the cognitive-historical analysis indirectly produces knowledge about the human cognition. Here, a way to use the cognitive-historical approach for didactical purposes is introduced. In this application, the cognitive processes in the history of physics are combined with current physics knowledge in order to create a cognitive-historical reconstruction of a certain quantity or law for the needs of physics teacher education. A principal aim of developing the approach has been that pre-service physics teachers must know how the physical concepts and laws are or can be formed and justified. As a practical example of the developed approach, a cognitive-historical reconstruction of the electromagnetic induction law was produced. For evaluating the uses of the cognitive-historical reconstruction, a teaching sequence for pre-service physics teachers was conducted. The initial and final reports of twenty-four students were analyzed through a qualitative categorization of students’ justifications of knowledge. The results show a conceptual development in the students’ explanations and justifications of how the electromagnetic induction law can be formed.     

Examining Physics Graduate Teaching Assistants’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Teaching a New Physics Curriculum

In this study, we investigated the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) that physics graduate teaching assistants (TAs) developed in the context of teaching a new introductory physics curriculum, Matter and Interactions (M&I). M&I is an innovative introductory physics course that emphasizes a unified framework for understanding the world and presents physics through a few fundamental principles rather than exposing students to concepts through a series of derived equations. Through a qualitative, multiple case study research design, data were collected from multiple sources: non-participant observations, digitally recorded video, semi-structured interviews, TAs?? written reflections, and researchers?? field notes. The TAs?? PCK included three components: (a) knowledge of M&I curriculum goals, (b) knowledge of instructional strategies appropriate to the M&I course, and (c) knowledge of students?? learning. This study shows the complexity of adopting curriculum reforms and the necessity to support the faculty??s and TAs?? knowledge development when a novel science curriculum is adopted.     

Motivational goal orientation, perceptions of biology and physics classroom learning environments, and gender

Researchers have reported persuasive evidence that students?? perceptions of their classroom learning environment account for significant variance in cognitive and affective outcomes (e.g. intrinsic motivation, self-concept, liking for particular subjects and students?? intention to drop out). The study reported in this paper investigated the relationship between students?? perceptions of classroom learning environment and motivational achievement goal orientations towards biology and physics, as well as the influence of gender. Participants (N?=?1538) were high school science students from the north-eastern region of Thailand. Our results suggest that motivational goals are linked to differences in students?? perceptions of learning environment and levels of biology and physics classroom anxiety. We found that females adopted significantly higher levels of mastery and performance approach goals towards biology, while males adopted significantly higher levels of mastery and performance approach goals towards physics. Males adopted significantly higher levels of performance avoidance goals towards both biology and physics. Positive associations emerged between gender and the adoption of specific performance goals, perceived degree of competition in biology and physics classrooms, and levels of biology and physics classroom anxiety. These results suggest that motivational goal orientations and perceptions of learning environment are gender-dependent and domain-specific for the two science content areas.     

The nature of scientific knowledge and student learning: Two longitudinal case studies

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between students' views of the nature of scientific knowledge and their own learning of physics, and the evolution of this relationship over time. Twenty-three students enrolled in a physics course that emphasised laboratory work and discussions about the nature of science. Over a 15-month period, an extensive data base was established including student essays and interviews regarding their views of the nature of science and teaching and learning of physics. As part of an extensive data generation, students read a book on the epistemology of physics, wrote reflective essays, and subsequently discussed the epistemology of physics in class. Two intensive case studies are used to illustrate our understanding of students' views over time. Changes in students' views concerning the nature of scientific knowledge and of the science teaching and learning process, which were not always complementary, are described with the aid of a model. The findings of this research have direct relevance to the planning and implementation of science courses in which the development of understandings of the nature of science is an objective.     

Consolidating Pre-service Physics Teachers’ Subject Matter Knowledge Using Didactical Reconstructions

In the Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, there are advanced physics courses designed for the needs of pre-service physics teachers. The starting point is that after introductory and intermediate physics courses, pre-service physics teachers know laws and definitions but the knowledge is quite fragmented and does not form coherent wholes. Graphical tools called didactical reconstructions were developed to help pre-service physics teachers to consolidate their physics knowledge. The idea behind the reconstructions is that “new” physics knowledge is always constructed based on previous knowledge (quantities, laws, theory). This means that every new concept is connected to previous concepts when it is formed; this is captured in the didactical reconstruction of processes. Then, when the knowledge is further constructed, the formed concept will be connected to other new concepts. This approach leads to the didactical reconstruction of structure: networks of quantities and laws, where the experiments and models construct the connections between quantities and laws. Here an overview and summary of the educational approach based on the didactical reconstruction is given for the first time. The results of the previously reported case studies show that the didactical reconstructions help students to connect the knowledge pieces into meaningful and more coherent wholes. These didactical reconstructions are now an integral part of our pre-service physics teacher education.     

Promotion of Cultural Content Knowledge Through the Use of the History and Philosophy of Science

Historical excurse was suggested as a beneficial form of using the history and philosophy of science in the modules of learning materials developed within the History and Philosophy in Science Teaching project. The paper briefly describes the theoretical framework of the produced modules, addressing ontological and epistemological aspects of historical changes in physics knowledge with regard to several particular concepts relevant to school course of physics. It is argued that such excurses create Cultural Content Knowledge which improves the Pedagogical Content Knowledge in teachers and are appropriate to facilitate the meaningful learning by students. The modules illustrate the new aspect of the scientific knowledge not sufficiently addressed in the current science educational discourse??the constructive diachronic discourse that took place in the history. Historical excurse makes explicit the paradigmatic conceptual changes in physics knowledge and thus creates the space of learning in which the ??correct?? knowledge (type I) emerges in a discourse with the alternates (type II knowledge). Some of the previous conceptions show certain similarity to students?? misconceptions which further motivates essential use of both types of scientific knowledge to support the meaningful learning of physics curriculum. The epistemological aspects of the developed materials illuminate the nature of scientific knowledge and its major features: objectiveness and cumulative nature. Teachers found the developed modules interesting, important but challenging their background and requiring special preparation.     

Differences in the problem solving of stronger and weaker novices in physics: Knowledge,strategies, or knowledge structure?

This study investigates the extent to which differences in the problem-solving performance of stronger and weaker novices in physics arise from: (a) differences in amount of domain knowledge, (b) differences in how domain knowledge is organized, and (c) differences in the strategic application of domain knowledge. Ten first-year university physics students attempted to solve one easy and one difficult problem involving Newton's second law. Clear differences in the protocols of stronger and weaker students for the difficult problem, combined with successful performance by all students on the easy problem, were interpreted as evidence for differences in the organization of relevant knowledge held by more versus less successful first-year physics students. Some differences in procedural knowledge were also observed, but all students used the working forward strategy that had been presented to them in lectures.     

大学物理分层次教学的探索与实践

文章分析了大学物理分层次教学的主要思想,研究了按照专业集中授课模式条件下如何更好地满足不同专业学生对物理学的不同层次的学习需求,探索出了在中国现实教育环境下实施分层次教学的一种有效方法--四步教学法。经实践检验证实了该方法能更好地激发学生的学习兴趣,以及更加注重知识应用和技能培养。     

初中英语阅读教学对教师文体知识的要求

阅读教学是中学英语教学的主要内容和形式。学生的词汇、语言知识和阅读技能的获得主要是在阅读中进行的。因此,初中英语教师要具备文体知识,并且在阅读教学中使用文体分析方法培养学生对英语篇章的观察、理解、和欣赏能力,帮助学生了解各类不同文体的特点,学会运用阅读技能更快、更全面地获取文中信息,并最终提高英语表达能力。     

Thinking Like a Scientist: Using Vee-Maps to Understand Process and Concepts in Science

It is considered important for students to participate in scientific practices to develop a deeper understanding of scientific ideas. Supporting students, however, in knowing and understanding the natural world in connection with generating and evaluating scientific evidence and explanations is not easy. In addition, writing in science can help students to understand such connections as they communicate what they know and how they know it. Although tools such as vee-maps can scaffold students?? efforts to design investigations, we know less about how these tools support students in connecting scientific ideas with the evidence they are generating, how these connections develop over time, or how writing can be used to encourage such connections. In this study, we explored students?? developing ability to reason scientifically by examining the relationship between students?? understanding of scientific phenomena and their understanding of how to generate and evaluate evidence for their ideas in writing. Three high school classes completed three investigations. One class used vee-mapping each time, one used vee-mapping once, and one did not use vee-mapping. Students?? maps and written reports were rated for understanding of relevant science procedural and conceptual ideas. Comparisons between groups and over time indicate a positive relationship between improved procedural and conceptual understanding. Findings also indicate that improved procedural understanding preceded improved conceptual understanding, and thus, multiple experiences were needed for students to connect evidence and explanation for science phenomena.     

Improving teaching and learning: a thermos bottle keeps things hot and cold, but how does it know?

Jim Ysseldyke, Professor of Educational Psychology and Director of the National Center on Educational Outcomes at the University of Minnesota, who gave a keynote address at 'isec 95', argues that in order to improve teaching and learning we need to know where we are going, how to get there, and the extent to which we are achieving educational goals. He contends that in most countries we have clearly articulated educational goals and provides evidence that we know how to achieve these goals, but asserts that we have no information on the extent to which students with disabilities are achieving such goals.     

Interactive Processes Between University Students: Structures of Interactions and Related Cognitive Development

Interactions between peers as well as between students and teachers play an important role in social learning. Although much research investigates the structure of (peer) discourse and its relation to learning outcomes, only a few studies try to describe in detail how individuals create meaning for content developed within the dialogues. Thus, it often remains unclear which contents and structures of the discourse contributed to the development of individual knowledge and which did not. This paper describes a study that investigated in great detail peer discourse and its relation to the cognitive development of every participating learner. In total, 27 university students were followed with video while working in pairs during physics laboratory exercises on electrodynamics. Students' cognitive processes developed during their interactions were reconstructed from the video by a small step analysis and students' meaning-making of other participants' contributions was investigated. Results show that students only interact about topics they already know whereas they develop new meaning outside of interactive processes.     

议题式教学在初中道德与法治中的应用策略

议题式教学是一种偏活动型的教学方式,具有开放性和引领性,是了解学生思想,对学生进行道德与法律培育的有效渠道。初中生在成长的过程中,不能只懂得积累知识,而不懂得自主思考,他们应该拥有自己的想法和观念。初中道德与法治教师使用议题式教学,能够增强学生的自主性,获得学生的想法。由此,教师通过关联学生生活、为学生提供学习材料、促使学生实践创新、优化对学生的评价,践行了议题式教学理念,获得了较为显著的教学效果。     

The interaction of learning environments and student discourse about knowing,learning, and the nature of science: Two longitudinal case studies

This is one of a series of studies conducted by a high school physics teacher, who used constructivist referents to plan and enact the curriculum, and to understand and improve the learning environment in his physics classes. Data were collected in the course of a two-year physics course including (a) repeated administrations of a classroom learning environment survey, (b) written essays on the topics of knowing, learning, and classroom learning environment, and (c) interviews. While there was a general trend for students to adopt more constructivist views of knowing and learning, there was also a small number who resisted to adapt to the constructivist learning environment in their physics course. Two case studies of individual students are used to illustrate the interactions of the learning environment, student understanding of scientific knowledge, and the nature of science, and students' views of their own learning.     

案例教学法对刑法分论教学改革的意义

案例教学对深化刑法分论教学改革意义重大,重视案例教学法是刑法分论教学改革的合理途径。恰当地设定案例,进行案例教学,是让学生系统掌握分论知识的有效方法,不但可使学生全面理解法条内容,掌握司法技能,还可增强学生处理具体问题的实务能力。     

Effects of text structure,reading goals and epistemic beliefs on conceptual change

We investigated the online and offline effects of learner and instructional characteristics on conceptual change of a robust misconception in science. Fifty‐nine undergraduate university students with misconceptions about evolution were identified as espousing evaluativist or non‐evaluativist epistemic beliefs in science. Participants were randomly assigned to receive a traditional or refutational text that discussed a misconception in evolution and a general comprehension or elaborative interrogation reading goal. Participants' cognitive and metacognitive processes while reading were measured using a think‐aloud protocol. Postreading, participants' correct and incorrect conceptual knowledge were separately assessed with a transference essay. Results showed that text structure and reading goals affected cognitive conflict, coherence‐building and elaborative processing while reading and promoted correct conceptual knowledge included in essays but failed to affect the inclusion of misconceptions. Further, participants with evaluativist epistemic beliefs engaged in fewer comprehension monitoring processes and were more likely to adapt their coherence‐building processes according to reading goals than their non‐evaluativist counterparts, but epistemic belief groups did not differ in the content of the posttest essay. Theoretical and educational implications of these findings are discussed.     

Alien or Alike? How the Perceived Similarity Between the Typical Science Teacher and a Student’s Self-Image Correlates with Choosing Science at School

By applying the self-to-prototype matching theory to students?? academic choices, this study links the unpopularity of science in many industrialized countries with the perceived gap between typical persons representing science (e.g. physics teachers) on the one hand and students?? self-image on the other. A sample of N?=?308 Dutch and German students described both themselves and typical teachers representing different school subjects using 65 trait adjectives. The following hypotheses were tested: The typical hard sciences teacher and the typical languages teacher will be perceived as differing in their personal characteristics. The typical physics teachers will be perceived as being less similar to students' own self-image than teachers representing languages. Actual choices students make during secondary school should correlate with the perceived fit between students?? self-image and the prototype of teachers representing different school subjects, especially in the less frequent and less popular choices of a math or physics major/profile. The findings supported these hypotheses. The discussion stresses that students acquire not only knowledge about science but also about science culture (sensu Aikenhead) in their science classes and that students?? image of science teachers can influence their academic choices.     

Enculturation into Technoscience: Analysis of the Views of Novices and Experts on Modelling and Learning in Nanophysics

In physics, the borderline between pure science and technology is increasingly diffuse. Physics can be seen as technoscience, a merged scientific and technological enterprise. The notion of technoscience has emerged from studies in the philosophy of science and sociology of science, and also seems to arise quite naturally in discussions with practicing scientists and as an underpinning of actual scientific practices. Nanophysics, the activities of which are closely connected with the advancement of technology and where modelling and simulations are extensively used, is a natural place to test how the ideas contained in technoscience can be used to understand these central activities and how they are learned. The views of physicists, both experts and novices, working on modelling and simulation problems in nanophysics and nanotechnology are examined in this study using multidimensional methods, to discover their views on how knowledge in their research field is acquired, constructed and justified??and how novices are enculturated into these knowledge-construction processes. Additionally, attention is paid to the question of the skills that are needed and how these skills, alongside the views of modelling, develop as a novice becomes an expert. The need to understand these basic epistemological processes is quite apparent from the viewpoint of understanding science, as well as in terms of using this understanding to guide education. The results of the analysis strongly suggest that ideas characterising technoscience are also present in the practitioners?? views; the technoscientific view can thus be used to understand and support the poorly understood process in which novices are enculturated as researchers in the field.     

高职院校法律基础课教学中存在的问题及对策研究

高职院校“法律基础”课承担着向学生传授法律基础知识、增强学生法律意识和提高法律素质的重要任务,课堂教学是实现这一目标的主渠道。而在教学实践中却存在对法律基础知识重视不够、对法律意识提升不够以及现代法治观念彰显不足等问题和偏差,没有把法律教育目标最终落实在提高学生法律素养这一层面。本文以法律基础教育目标的三个层次为参考,分析了法律基础教学中存在的问题,提出了改进法律基础课教学要遵循法律教育目标的“三层次”、突出学生主体地位、整合资源,寻求多种途径提高教师素质,鼓励学生参加各种法律社会实践。