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Changes in Physics Curriculum for Prospective Physics Teachers as Implied by the Cultural Change and the Crisis in Physics Education
Igal Galili, Michael Tzeitlin
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel



GIREP Seminar
2003


Among indications of a crisis in physics education is an impressively low number of students who enroll to physics classes in high schools. We consider this fact as informing educators regarding the necessity of searching for the new relevant meanings of scientific contents, physics curriculum to be delivered by teachers. The new meanings of scientific knowledge reflect the new cultural environment in the modern society. Our study suggested such a meaning with regard to physics in comparison with the currently employed vision commonly realized in introductory courses at high schools and universities. We suggest that the professional training of physics teachers will reveal to them a dialogue among physics discipline-cultures (each representing a fundamental physics discipline, such as mechanics and electrodynamics). In a discipline-culture, one can distinguish three domains of knowledge elements: (1) the nucleus [central principles and paradigms], (2) normal disciplinary knowledge [knowledge units derived from the contents of the nucleus], and (3) peripheral knowledge [theories, models etc. contradicting the contents of the nucleus]. It appears that physics, as a whole, cannot be arranged in a single tripartite (triadic) structure (this presents a deconstruction of the suggested approach), since, for example, classical mechanics is incompatible with electrodynamics, for its being inherently relativistic. Still, physics can be seen as a family of several discipline-cultures, sharing concepts, formal tools, epistemology. Bound together by family similarity, the disciple-cultures are in a conceptual discourse. Thus, teaching physics as a culture will create a polyphonic space for different worldviews. In this our perception, old physics theories that are currently “non-relevant” for the discipline and thus often dropped from the curriculum, become important for instruction, as being inherent components of the material to be taught. Implications of the tripartite structure were suggested.