Gateway to Physics –Inquiry Modules and In-Service Workshops for Advanced Level Middle School Physics Teachers

Leading team

Project members

  • Marina Boidechenko
  • Jenia Chaikin
  • Carmel Gorni
  • Dr. Zehorit Kapach
  • Zeev Krakover
  • David Perl
  • Ella Segal
  • Michal Sigron

Team members – Past

  • Dr. Amnon Chazan
  • Dr. Elon Langbeheim
  • Nancy Shalev

Summary

The “Gateway to Physics” program is intended for physics students and teachers in middle school excellence programs. The program combines active learning strategies (POE – predict, observe, explain, scientific dialogue and structured inquiry) to develop students as ‘doers’ of physics, to engage them in experimental and mathematical modeling of real-world phenomena and increase their self-efficacy.

In the program, students examine conflicting hypotheses about intriguing everyday phenomena; They plan investigations with the help of motion videos that they analyze with technological tools available on their smartphone; They learn Newton’s laws and mathematical tools – from graphical representations to estimating measurement uncertainties – in order to reconcile the contradictory hypotheses, present their findings and experience peer review. As part of the program, a computational modeling unit implemented in Vpython was developed.

The teachers in the program, with diverse disciplinary backgrounds (from biology to physics), take part in professional development workshops and learning communities in which they experience the learning materials,  which are suitable for 1-2 hours per week during the school year and discuss the pedagogical strategies underlying the materials. They share their classroom experiences with community members, consult and discuss together responses to challenges emerging from the field.

The program is a framework for research that focuses on teachers’ perceptions and teaching methods. Previous research has dealt with teachers’ attitudes towards the assimilation of computational modeling in their classrooms.

The PhD research of Mr. David Perl, supervised by Prof. Edit Yerushalmi of the Weizmann Institute of Science, and Prof. Baruch Schwartz of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, focuses on promoting an argumentative discourse in the physics classroom and understanding the conditions necessary for its realization:

Collaborative argumentation-based learning is a dialectical process in which conflicting claims are examined and as a result of the discussion between the parties, learning- synthesis takes place. This goal requires a fundamental change in the culture of the physics classroom – which requires long-term support frameworks for teachers’ professional development, for example within disciplinary learning communities.

The present study is concerned with identifying the attitudes of teachers participating in teacher communities toward activities designed to promote classroom argumentative discourse and identifying changes in their attitudes after experiencing these activities in the classroom. The research will be conducted within a community of middle school teachers who teach physics in excellence classes. About half of the teachers have a disciplinary background, while the other half are out of field teachers. The study examines the following questions:

  1. What are the attitudes of teachers towards argumentative learning in physics? How do they depend on the different characteristics of the teachers? (e.g. disciplinary background)? How are they related to their epistemic perceptions of physics and the perception of their role as teachers?
  2. what are the design principles for professional development activities that promote argumentative learning processes in the physics classroom?

Our thanks to the Eddie and Jules Trump Family Foundation and the Ministry of Education for their support of the project.

Administration

Rina Kimchi

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