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I gymnasieskolans kursplaner för ämnet fysik framhålls det undersökande arbetssättet genom att betona att eleverna ska ges förutsättningar att utveckla förmågan att söka svar på frågor, planera, genomföra, tolka och redovisa experiment. Eleverna ska dessutom ges möjligheter att använda sina kunskaper i fysik för att kommunicera, argumentera och presentera slutsatser. Utgångspunkten i den här avhandlingen är att laborationsmomentet skapar en speciell diskurs där eleverna blir aktörer och läraren iträder rollen som observatör. I en sådan miljö skapas förutsättningar för att eleverna på ett naturligt sätt får möjlighet att prata och diskutera fysik, utifrån sina egna förutsättningar. Syftet med denna avhandling är att genom praktikbaserade studier tydliggöra hur fysiklaborationens utformning påverkar elevernas kommunikation och vidare hur eleverna använder språket vid laborationstillfället för att skapa förståelse. Detta bidrar till debatten om fysiklaborationens effektivitet, sett både ur ett undervisnings- och inlärningsperspektiv. Resultaten visar att olika laborationsformer är uppbyggda av liknande aktiviteter, men varierar i tid som ägnas åt de olika aktiviteterna. Aktiviteterna i sin tur skapar samtal av olika karaktär. Olika samtalsformer används för skilda syften. Ett analytiskt ramverk har skapats för att ingående kunna studera hur och vad eleverna talar om både på en lingvistisk och kognitiv nivå.
Laboratory work as a teaching and learning method is given prominence in the Swedish physics curriculum for upper secondary school. It is emphasised that students should be given opportunities to develop the ability to search for answers to questions, plan, conduct, interpret and present results. Moreover, students should also be encouraged to use their physics knowledge to communicate, argument and present conclusions. This thesis is based on the belief that physics laboratory work creates a special discourse, where the student becomes the actor and the teacher becomes the organiser and observer. Such an environment enables students to naturally engage in physics discussions using their own terms. The aim is to explore students’ laboratory work at upper secondary school in-depth, with respect to its design and influence on students’ communication. Through analysis of students’ communication, the purpose is to better understand the physics laboratory work’s possibilities as a teaching and learning method. This will contribute to ongoing debate about the effectiveness of laboratory work. The results show that laboratory work consists of similar activities but differs in amount of time allocated to the different activities. Different types of talk are used for different purposes. An analytical framework has been created to enable deeper investigations of how and what students are talking about at both a linguistic and cognitive level. Moreover, the analysis shows the importance of students acquiring knowledge about physics and understanding the value of using an investigative approach as well as acquiring core content physics knowledge.
The present paper reports on a case study that examined the effectiveness of a practical activity in physics, at a Swedish upper secondary school. A teacher and 19 students participated in the study. The students were observed while working with the topic motion, in a computer based laboratory environment (CBL). This case study is part of an ongoing longitudinal study, about the role of laboratory work with different degrees of freedom. The analysis of interviews, written reports and posttest, shows that the practical work was effective based on Millar’s model. Even so, the students had difficulties expressing what they learned from the activity. This study emphasizes the complexity of planning and conducting laboratory work that is effective, from several different aspects.
More knowledge of how the actual design of the laboratory work influence students' communication, is needed to design and implement physics laboratory work lessons. The aim with this quantitative research, conducted at a Swedish upper secondary school, was to explore how the design of the laboratory work affects students' communication. Twenty students divided into five groups participated in this natural case study and were video recorded while performing four practical tasks with the theme uniformly accelerated motion, designed by their teacher. The four workstations were categorised based on three predefined descriptors: outcome, approach and procedure. Students' work at each workstation was coded according to five defined activities: planning, preparing equipment, collecting data, processing data and analysis of results. The activities were thereafter divided into shorter episodes that were coded for three different types of communication: disputational talk, cumulative talk and exploratory talk. The result shows that the amount of exploratory talk students engaged in are influenced by the style of the laboratory work and the character of the activity. Based on these research results, teachers can better accustom the laboratory work to facilitate fruitful physics discussions which endorse students' learning.
In this case study, we explore students’ communication during practical work in physics at an upper secondary school in Sweden from a sociocultural perspective. We investigate the relation between the interaction and content of students’ communication and outcomes of their actions, with the purpose of finding new knowledge for informing teachers in their choice of instruction. We make discourse analysis of how students interact but also of what students are discussing in terms of underlying content at a linguistic and cognitive level. Twenty students divided into five groups were video recorded while performing four practical tasks at different stations during laboratory work about motion. An analytical framework was developed and applied for one group to three parts of the transcripts in which three different talk-types occurred. Discursive, content, action and purposive moves in the process were identified for each talk-type at both linguistic and cognitive levels. These moves represent information concerning what the teacher actually assigns students to do, and how students make meaning of the activities. Through these different communicative moves, students experience how laboratory work can enhance their competence to collaborate in a scientific environment with complex practical and theoretical questions to solve quickly. Implications of the findings are discussed.
Vid Karlstads universitet har vi sedan hösten 2017 infört energiteater som en aktivitet i fysikkurser på samtliga grund- och ämneslärarutbildningar. Energiteater kan betraktas som en kompletterande undervisnings- och inlärningsform, där studenter förväntas att i mindre grupper tillsammans diskutera och sedan gestalta förekommande energiformer och energiomvandlingar i olika vardagsscenarier. I den här studien har videoinspelningar av en grupps gestaltningar kring två skilda scenarier analyserats i syfte att klargöra på vilket sätt energiteater stimulerar studenternas kommunikation och interaktion. Scenarierna involverarde energiomvandlingar som sker då en studsboll studsar mot marken, respektive de energiomvandlingar som sker i ett snurrande änglaspel. Resultatet visar att energiteater i stor utsträckning stimulerar utforskande samtal mellan studenterna, vilket kan betraktas somen meningsskapande dialog. Aktivitetens karaktär bidrar till att alla deltagare blir aktiva och förtrogna med förekommande energiformer och energiomvandlingar. Planerandet och genomförandet av gestaltningen skapar spontana kvalitativa diskussioner kring flödet av energi mellan olika system, som på ett naturligt sätt motiverar studenterna att vidareutveckla själva gestaltningen. Vi menar att energiteater kan stärka lärarstudenternas egen förståelse av energi, men att den även kan erbjuda en möjlig alternativ undervisningsansats för lärarstudenterna i sin blivande roll som lärare i skolan.
In the present study, a teaching sequence concerning electromagnetic induction was introduced to 24 primary teacher students divided into six groups, in order to provide the students with deeper knowledge about how kinetic energy can be transformed into electricity. The aim of this study was to investigate to what extent these teacher students, developed an understanding of electromagnetic induction, without using a mathematical language. The teaching sequence consisted of a group discussion, a practical exercise, computer simulations and a final didactical group reflection. We used a context rich problem, where students were asked to describe how a wind power plant works. During these discussions, the students realised that some kind of generator was needed, but they did not understand its function and concluded that they as teachers only needed to know that it gives rise to an energy transformation. The practical exercise contributed to a deeper understanding of the observed phenomenon, even though students’ ability to structure their inquiry varied a lot. The computer simulations turned out to be a valuable complement to the practical exercise. The practical experiment, together with the simulation, helped the students to understand how electrical current is produced. Based on our analysis, we can see how the different parts of the teaching activity, together but in different ways, help the students to develop their understanding and view of electromagnetic induction. The students’ final group reflections show how important it is to have good physics content knowledge to be able to value and take advantage of the children’s curiosity.
In the present study, four practical exercises were introduced in a university-level mechanics course, in order to provide students with shared, personal, embodied experiences of physical phenomena in relation to the taught content. The practical exercises were performed during 10-15 minutes with subsequent discussion in random groups of 3-4 students during recitation sessions. Two of the exercises involved physically experiencing the reduced force of raising a 5 kg weight with a rope and a system of pulleys compared to with a rope alone, and finding the centre of mass of an object by holding under the object with ones hands and moving the hands toward one another. Video analysis of selected episodes of students’ interaction with the exercises reveals how they coordinated gestures and spoken language in expressing their conceptual understanding of the phenomena. In a subsequent group interview, participant physics teacher students expressed that the exercises were useful for feeling physically what they had previously only calculated. Apart from grounding conceptual understanding in physical experiences, the course evaluation shows that participation in random small groups led to increased communication among students that did not know each other before, thereby contributing to the development of a learning community.