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Faculty of mathematics and physics, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
GIREP Seminar
2003
During a course in Didactics of Physics for the third and the fourth grade of university studies for primary school physics teachers, we meet with students once a week for two hours at methodical practicum. The main purpose of our practicum is to discuss and do basic primary school experiments and to derive logical conclusions. The second and not less important purpose is to clear up the picture the students have in their minds about the basic principles, they will have to teach, to (re)build connections and to fortify the basic knowledge. Usually during the course some problems are exposed and then formulated as homeworks. The students are meant to finish them at home – we expect they will think again about the subject we discussed at practicuum and show some basic understanding. To my frequent astonishment, several misconceptions are revealed in their homeworks. I will report about some of them. To work my way through their papers, it is a time consuming practice, but also worth while. I am able to get useful reflexive information about the misuse of concepts that I would never be able to think about only by myself.