Teaching Physics - Hardcover

Viennot, L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1402012756 ISBN 13: 9781402012754

Publisher: Springer, 2003

Synopsis

Everywhere in the world, except, for the time being, in some Asian countries, young people are losing interest in science. This disenchantment with science studies is particularly strong in the United States, but has affected Europe, and France especially. Official statistics confirm this, and I can add a telling example of my own. When I began teaching physics at Grenoble University in 1960, there were some 350 students studying to be electrical engineers. Today, 57 students are enrolled in the Physics Maitrise programme at the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, and 15 of them are foreign students. In that time interval, the total number of students enrolled in institutes of higher learning in mainland France rose from 309 700 (in 1960-1961) to 2 111 100 (in 2000-2001). If we look at what happened in the USA, to try to avoid making the same mistakes, there is indeed a strongly antiscientific trend in that society, of which the "Politically Correct Movement" is the most extreme manifestation. Yet this movement has profoundly influenced the humanities departments of American universities, and the persons responsible for training teachers. There is a risk that similar negative effects will show up in France, where many primary school teachers have a background in the humanities, and often have no scientific culture at all. c. P. Snow's famous pamphlet on the "two cultures" was published in 1959, but is still exceedingly topical and should be recommended reading in all teacher training institutes.

About this title

Synopsis

This book seeks to narrow the current gap between educational research and classroom practice in the teaching of physics. Research is now moving beyond the recording of the specific forms of common thought to construct and evaluate teaching interventions appropriate to conventional institutional contexts. The approach adopted here makes a detailed analysis of research findings derived from experiments involving pupils, students and teachers in the field. Clear guidelines are laid down for the development and evaluation of sequences, drawing attention to "critical details" of the practice of teaching that may spell success or failure for the project. Five sequences illustrate the discussion with the following topics: contact, friction and propulsion, pressure in fluids, superposition of electric fields, superposition of coherent waves and optical imaging, and colour phenomena. This all feeds into a discussion of sequence evaluation procedures, underlining the vital importance of teachers' reactions to the detailed aspects of practice proposed to them.

Edition details

• Publisher: Springer
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1402012756
• ISBN 13: 9781402012754
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 250