Breaking the Vicious Circle of Secondary Science Education with Twenty-First-Century Technology: Smartphone Physics Labs

Abstract

Science education in general and physics education specifically have been at the forefront of educational research for at least six decades. Since the early 1960s, there has been a consensus that student science disengagement has long-range, negative ramifications for nations. A number of concerted and well-funded efforts have emerged across the Western world to address this problem. Yet, the vicious circle of student disengagement from science has remained. One of the reasons for this is that, by and large, science teaching hasn’t changed enough to meet student needs during this time. While many novel and innovative science education technologies have emerged lately, few schools are able to take full advantage of them or to support teachers in their implementation. Paradoxically, as students become more engaged with their new digital tools, they become more disengaged from their science learning. In this chapter, we challenge the notion that novel technologies that twenty-first-century students have in their pockets should detract them from learning science. Thus, we discuss how smartphones—a tool many secondary students use daily for their social interactions—can help break the vicious circle of secondary science disengagement. We first propose a pedagogical approach for using smartphones in a science classroom to conduct hands-on inquiry that focuses on experimental design, data collection, and analysis. Second, we describe our experience of using this approach in a secondary physics classroom, as well as during the province-wide annual Physics Olympics event that takes place at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Third, we discuss how science educators can support new and practicing teachers in implementing this novel technology in their classrooms through mentorship and communities of practice.