Defining and Operationalizing Appropriation for Science Learning

2014

The overarching goal of this paper is to contribute to our understanding of the interplay between students’ disciplinary engagement and their identity construction. The term appropriation, borrowed from scholars in linguistics and education, was chosen to capture this broader sense of productive learning that sits at the nexus of disciplinary engagement and identity. Appropriation implies productive learning including deep conceptual understanding, but it also involves a reflexive process of populating scientific discourse with personal intentions, purposes and tastes that allow a student to embody scientific discourse and concepts in a way that is authentic and personal. The core aim of th…

The challenge of contemporary society on science education: The case of global warming.

2014

The big problems that contemporary society needs to address (e.g. climate change) challenge our traditional idea of education and require to revise the goals of science education research. Such problems are indeed so complex as to require a wide range of competencies to be engaged in producing and implementing solution strategies. Science education is forced to take into account the many dimensions that characterize contemporary science and to face the task of bringing together the potential of all the different perspectives (Tasquier & Nonni, 2011). An example of this kind of research, concerning environmental problems, will be briefly described and its first encouraging results illustrate…

Climate Change: An Educational Proposal Integrating the Physical and Social Sciences

2014

Abstract The scientific community has been debating climate change for at least twenty years. The EU has recommended a set of innovative reforms to science teaching, incorporating environmental issues in the scientific curriculum, answering the need for making school a place of civic education. This paper focuses on the presentation of materials designed to foster both deep understanding of the basic concepts involved in climate change as well as critical thinking for addressing some cognitive and emotional barriers that have been proved to hinder individual behavioural reactions.

From Heuristics to Humble Theories in Physics Education: The Case of Modelling Personal Appropriation of Thermodynamics in Naturalistic Settings

2014

This paper concerns the analysis of data collected during the implementation of a teaching proposal on thermodynamics in a class of 20 students (17 year-olds) of a scientifically-oriented secondary school in Italy. After a brief presentation of the teaching proposal design and of the notion of learning environment as properly complex territory, the results of two levels of analysis are discussed. The first level regards a phenomenological (bottom-up) analysis of a selection of individual interviews to students. The analysis allowed us: i) to reconstruct how different students approached the study of thermodynamics; ii) to show in what sense we can infer, in the words of Confrey, that the te…

Forms of productive complexity as criteria for educational reconstruction: the design of a teaching proposal on thermodynamics

2014

Abstract The paper discusses teaching materials on thermodynamics, designed and implemented in 5 classes of scientifically-oriented secondary schools in Italy (grade 12). The materials are designed to: i) foster conceptual understanding; ii) create a learning environment rich enough to enable each student to find a personal way for appropriating content knowledge. In order to achieve the first aim, the design takes into account the main results of literature about student's difficulties in thermodynamics. In order to achieve the second aim, forms of “productive complexities” are implemented. The paper presents the design criteria and shows why they have the potential to create an inclusive …

Meeting the Discipline-Culture Framework of Physics Knowledge: A Teaching Experience in Italian Secondary School

2014

The paper deals with physics teaching/learning in high school. An investigation in three upper secondary school classes in Italy explored the reactions of students to a structuring lecture on optics within the discipline-culture (DC) framework that organises physics knowledge around four interrelated fundamental theories of light. The lecture presented optics as an unfolding conceptual discourse of physicists regarding the nature of light. Along with the knowledge constructed in a school course of a scientific lyceum, the students provided epistemological comments, displaying their perception of physics knowledge presented in the classroom. Students’ views and knowledge were investigated by…

LEADING SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS TO FACE THE DISCIPLINARY, EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND SOCIETAL CHALLENGES OF CLIMATE CHANGE: DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF MULTI-D…

The scientific community has been debating climate change (CC) for over two decades. In the light of certain arguments put forward by the aforesaid community, the EU has recommended a set of innovative reforms to science teaching, such as incorporating environmental issues into the scientific curriculum, thereby helping to make schools a place of civic education. However, despite these European recommendations, relatively little emphasis is still given to climate change within science curricula. The main goal of the research project described in this thesis is to study if, how and why the scientific contents related to CC could be reconstructed so as to integrate the many dimensions involve…

Cambiamenti climatici e insegnamento/apprendimento della Fisica: Una proposta didattica

2013

From more than 10 years, the European Union recommends significant reforms for science teaching at school in order to include environmental issues in the scientific curricula. As Osborne and Dillon argue in an important European Report (Science Education in Europe: Critical Reflections. A Report to the Nuffield Foundation, 2008), although climate change is one of the five major problems facing humanity in the coming century, there is still little emphasis within the science curriculum on discussion or analysis of environmental issues. In this paper a pilot study is presented and discussed. It focuses on the issue of climate change (global warming and the greenhouse effect) carried out with …