Teachers' training program for teaching physics within science in lower secondary school
Mojca Cepic
Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia



GIREP Seminar
2003


Within the reformed curriculum of fundamental nine-year education a new subject where intertwined biological, physical and chemical temes are present, was introduced. Unfortunately, existent University programs for teachers' eductaion allow for combination of two subjects only. Typically, students choose mathematics and physics, physics and technology or biology and chemistry. Biology students have a short physics and chemistry course during the study, but both courses are meant as an overview of a discipline and a background for understanding some processes and methods during the study of the basic subject. But physics students do not have biology and chemistry at all. After diploma teachers of thata study one or two basic components of the Science course do not posses adequate knowledge to teach also themes from the missing one or two subjects. In order to get a licence for teaching also the Science, teacher has to attend an additional training porgram from the subject that was not studied. As an example – a teacher of biology and chemistry has to do the training program in physics, but a teacher of mathematics and physics has to the the training in chemistry and biology.

In the contribution a short overview of the physics part of the Science curriculum will be given. The structure of the Training program in physics in an extension of 105 hours will be presented and a few examples of the pedagogical and didactical approach for teaching of »currents« (material flow, heat flow and charge flow) on the lower secondary level will be demonstrated.