Learning Introductory Quantum Physics: Sensori‐motor experiences and mental models

This paper reports a cross‐sectional study of Taiwanese physics students’ understanding of subatomic phenomena that are explained by quantum mechanics. The study uses students’ explanations of their answers to items in a questionnaire as a proxy for students’ thinking. The variation in students’ explanations is discussed as is the development in the way in which students link different concepts. A discussion of the source of students’ ideas turns to the way schema contain mental models that derive from sensori‐experiences. The principal recommendation for teaching is the need to include practical activities on a range of precursor phenomena so as to extend the students repertoires of mental models. This advice is different from that given in previous studies.     

Technology in education: Research and development in the project ‘Physics and Technology’

Summaries

English

The diagnosis of pupils’ misconceptions and the identification of reasons for such misconceptions must be considered the prerequisite for helping the pupils to develop correct scientific conceptions. In the present study, an attempt was made to investigate student teachers’ competency to diagnose pupils’ answers for possible misconceptions. It was found that student teachers are, by and large, not capable of making appropriate diagnoses of misconceptions. In view of this, it is suggested that in science teacher‐training programmes specific training activities be included which are designed to develop the desired diagnostic competence.     

Learning the streets: ‘prostitutes’ in inner-city Copenhagen, 1930s

In this paper, police files and court cases from the Copenhagen City Court from the late 1930s are used as a window into the ways in which the living conditions and everyday life on the street unfolded among ‘prostitute’ women in poor inner-city neighbourhoods. Bourdieu’s notion of habitus is employed to analyse the social conditions under which the women became ‘prostitutes’, and the tricks of the trade that it was necessary to learn in order to ‘work the streets’ in poor inner-city neighbourhoods in a transforming Copenhagen in the 1930s.     

‘Across the Divide’: Developing Professional Learning Ecosystems in STEM Education

Research in Science Education - This paper reports the findings from a cross-sector research project designed to question how the development of university-school partnerships can influence...