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Coherence of Pre-service Physics Teachers’ Views of the Relatedness of Physics Concepts

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Abstract

In physics teacher education, one of the recurrent themes is the importance of fostering the formation of organised and coherent knowledge structures, but a simple shared understanding of what coherence actually means and how it can be recognised, is not easily found. This study suggests an approach in which the coherence of students’ views about the relatedness of physics concepts can be identified and evaluated. Six pre-service physics teachers presented their understanding of the relatedness of physics concepts in the form of specially designed concept maps in which experimental or modelling procedures were required as links between physics concepts. The acceptability of the links was evaluated by using four criteria for epistemic analysis introduced in this study. The weighted values describing the maps’ structural features were calculated, and finally, the cases were compared and the differences between them were discussed. The results show that the epistemic analysis of links affects remarkably to the acceptability of knowledge and thus also the coherence of such knowledge. The highest criterion set for acceptability seems to be very demanding to fulfil and even in the advanced level of studies only a fraction of students manage to reach it. The cases examined here show that the knowledge structures are partly fragmented and not as coherent as one would have expected them to be.

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Notes

  1. For example Derbentseva et al. (2007), Kinchin et al. (2005), Kinchin et al. (2000), Liu (2004), Safayeni et al. (2005).

  2. For instance McClure et al. (1999), Novak (2002), Nicoll et al. (2001), Ruiz-Primo and Shavelson (1996).

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Academy of Finland grant 1133369.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, PO Box 64, 00014, Helsinki, Finland

    Maija Nousiainen

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  1. Maija Nousiainen
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Correspondence to Maija Nousiainen.

Appendices

Appendix

In this Appendix, examples are given of the different types of students’ explanations and how they were analysed by using the four criteria for epistemic analysis which was carried out by two researchers and discussed until a common agreement was found (see Tables 2, 3).

Table 2 Examples of the epistemic analysis of links in the electric field context
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Table 3 Examples of the epistemic analysis of links in the magnetic field context
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The Electric Field

The example of criterion 1 does not contain much information about the properties of capacitance but it represents an ontologically acceptable link. The example 2 (facts) discusses the properties of the electric field but the arguments are supported in a vague and superficial way. The example 3 (methodology) presents a historical experiment for Coulomb’s law and the student uses a short-cut to get the results since the function of Coulomb’s torsion balance is not adequately explained. So the validity of this argument is missing. The example 4 (valid justification) has a thorough explanation in which each step of the formation of Coulomb’s law is taken into account acceptably. This explanation fulfils all the criteria (1–4) set for epistemic acceptability.

The Magnetic Field

The example of criterion 1 uses an ontologically correct concept but the student does not explicitly explain the relationship between the concepts. The example 2 presents an obscure description of the measurements and jumps to a straightforward conclusion about Ampére’s law. The given description does not fulfil the criterion set for a methodologically acceptable justification. The example 3 has an otherwise adequate description to fulfil the methodological criterion, but it makes a circular reference to use a magnetic flux meter to define Bio–Savart’s law (and the strength of magnetic flux). So the methodology is acceptable but the justification is not valid. In the example 4 an experiment is explained thoroughly and in logical order. The background information about the magnetic interaction between a wire and compass gives nice scaffolding to the argument.

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Nousiainen, M. Coherence of Pre-service Physics Teachers’ Views of the Relatedness of Physics Concepts. Sci & Educ 22, 505–525 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-012-9500-6

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