Kari Sormunen

Preservice and Inservice Teachers’ Challenges in the Planning of Practical Work in Physics

Practical work in school science plays many essential roles that have been discussed in the literature. However, less attention has been paid to how teachers learn the different roles of practical work and to the kind of challenges they face in their learning during laboratory courses designed for teachers. In the present study we applied the principles of grounded theory to frame a set of factors that seem to set major challenges concerning both successful work in the school physics laboratory and also in the preparation of lessons that exploit practical work. The subject groups of the study were preservice and inservice physics teachers who participated in a school laboratory course. Our results derived from a detailed analysis of tutoring discussions between the instructor and the participants in the course, which revealed that the challenges in practical or laboratory work consisted of the limitations of the laboratory facilities, an insufficient knowledge of physics, problems in understanding instructional approaches, and the general organization of practical work. Based on these findings, we present our recommendations on the preparation of preservice and inservice teachers for the more effective use of practical work in school science and in school physics.

Quality of SSI Scenarios Designed by Science Teachers

The current problem related to science education is that students seem to lack the interest and motivation towards science studies. Teaching modules that are based on socio-scientific issues (SSI) in science education have been found to be interesting and motivating for students. One way to begin with SSI modules is to use scenarios that combine science content with SSI by including, for example, everyday examples related to students’ life or societal issues. An ideal scenario is connected to SSI, supports students’ involvement and reflection, and stimulates students’ scientific questions. However, earlier studies have shown that teachers have concerns about creating motivating SSI scenarios. The data for this case study was gathered from Finnish teachers who designed 24 scenarios in total for their science classes. We applied deductive content analysis and typification in order to find what kind of scenarios the teachers planned and implemented. There were eight high-quality scenarios, which took the motivational socio-scientific context into account in a diverse manner, involved students in collective thinking and reflection on their prior knowledge, and stimulated open-ended scientific questions with multiple solutions. The majority of the scenarios were so-called mediocre scenarios (14), which included weakly motivational aspects related to the socio-scientific context, and the low-quality scenarios (2) which paid only little attention to them. Our findings indicate that it seems to be challenging but possible for science teachers to develop an SSI scenario that is interesting and motivational from students’ point of view.

Seventh-Grade Pupils’ Epistemic Views in the Context of Model-Based Instruction

This paper relates to the research of personal epistemology. Different frameworks of the research area are discussed and the theoretical framework for studying young pupils’ epistemic views is presented. The epistemic views deal with pupils’ conceptions related both to justification and to certainty of knowledge in a science learning context. The empirical aim of this study was to discover pupils’ views of their own knowledge, their physics teacher’s knowledge and the scientists’ knowledge. The context of the study were science 12 hours of science lessons during which the pupils were taught the modelling idea connected to the topic ‘structure of matter’. The subjects in this case study were eighteen 13-year-old secondary school pupils. The results show that pupils have different views concerning the justification of knowledge and the certainty of knowledge depending on the person: a pupil, a teacher or a scientist. The results have implications for the development of science curriculula and new teaching approaches.

Is an Iron Atom Made of Iron

The aim of this study was to investigate if students can make a distinction between the properties of a metal object and the properties of an atom inside the same object. We wanted also to study how students respond to different questions which from the physicists’ point of view are similar. The questionnaire was administrated for secondary school and high school pupils, physics students, physics and mathematics teacher trainees at a university, preservice elementary teachers and for engineering students. Data was collected in Finland and in Russian Karelia. We found that generally students have poor conceptions of the properties of matter. The result might be interpreted that the formulation of the questions affects students’ thinking.