approach, but the integration of modern physics in the curriculum within a vertical
perspective, selecting relevant topics and adopting conceptual based approaches is
up to now an open question in physics education research.
To gain the needed appropriation for an active learning approach, a particular
research-oriented study is required. The analysis of conceptual referents and learning
difficulties in each specific approach offered in literature and the comparison of
approaches in planning the teaching proposal, together with the selection and
preparation of learning materials remain a preliminary step for the educational
employ. Teachers don’t have the resources and the time for that work. There is a
need of research-based pilot implementation of educational proposals in the perspective of their integration in school curriculum for instructional scope and in
addition support have to be guarantee to teachers.
We worked in that direction and we studied research-based proposals for new
topics integration in secondary school curriculum looking in global perspective for a
coherent framework and vertical paths in curriculum development and we start
analyzing disciplinary, social, and educational relevance of topical areas in the
different fields of updated research activities, looking to the relative educational
power in gaining physics identity. We call here physics identity those conceptual
competence consisting in the gained approach by students to the problems in
phenomena interpretation, producing the attitude to identify the needed knowledge,
instruments, and methods with the awareness of the relative power and limits for
finding solutions and discuss evidence-based results by means of the treatment of
formal aspects in a coherent way using basic math competences.
For this scope we selected topics and we studied vertical proposal in the research
framework of the Model of Educational Reconstruction—MER (Duit et al. 2005).
We carried out Design Based Research (DBR) (Anderson and Shattuck 2012)
intervention modules to calibrate the proposal and to prepare educational materials
useful for practice. The dimensions of such kind of research are many and include
the study of relevance and of the educational reconstruction of each topic in
accordance with MER, curricular studies (Constantinou and Papadouris 2008),
comparative research for curricular aspects (Sokolowska et al. 2014), and empirical
research on learning processes (Erickson 1998). Starting from learning difficulties
and students’ reasoning we study educational paths and individual strategies in
relationship with conceptual stimuli (Vosniadou 2013), the role of different representations and of personal/cooperative work on specific aspects as ideal experiments.
Research and development in producing new multimedia tools and experiments
accompanied our work (Michelini 2010). We developed up to now a series of
proposals that we do not consider exhaustive.
After a discussion of the adopted approach for this goals, we list here the
proposals developed up to now, that we don’t consider exhaustive, but examples
of coherent paths in vertical perspective for modern physics in school curriculum.
We leave the discussion of learning processes activated in classroom intervention
modules and relative outcomes to the specific papers published during the researchbased implementation of the paths development (Michelini et al. 2017, 2008;
Greczyło et al. 2010; Vercellati 2010; Michelini and Stefanel 2008, 2010). Here
10 Innovation of Curriculum and Frontiers of Fundamental Physics in Secondary. . .
103
perspective, selecting relevant topics and adopting conceptual based approaches is
up to now an open question in physics education research.
To gain the needed appropriation for an active learning approach, a particular
research-oriented study is required. The analysis of conceptual referents and learning
difficulties in each specific approach offered in literature and the comparison of
approaches in planning the teaching proposal, together with the selection and
preparation of learning materials remain a preliminary step for the educational
employ. Teachers don’t have the resources and the time for that work. There is a
need of research-based pilot implementation of educational proposals in the perspective of their integration in school curriculum for instructional scope and in
addition support have to be guarantee to teachers.
We worked in that direction and we studied research-based proposals for new
topics integration in secondary school curriculum looking in global perspective for a
coherent framework and vertical paths in curriculum development and we start
analyzing disciplinary, social, and educational relevance of topical areas in the
different fields of updated research activities, looking to the relative educational
power in gaining physics identity. We call here physics identity those conceptual
competence consisting in the gained approach by students to the problems in
phenomena interpretation, producing the attitude to identify the needed knowledge,
instruments, and methods with the awareness of the relative power and limits for
finding solutions and discuss evidence-based results by means of the treatment of
formal aspects in a coherent way using basic math competences.
For this scope we selected topics and we studied vertical proposal in the research
framework of the Model of Educational Reconstruction—MER (Duit et al. 2005).
We carried out Design Based Research (DBR) (Anderson and Shattuck 2012)
intervention modules to calibrate the proposal and to prepare educational materials
useful for practice. The dimensions of such kind of research are many and include
the study of relevance and of the educational reconstruction of each topic in
accordance with MER, curricular studies (Constantinou and Papadouris 2008),
comparative research for curricular aspects (Sokolowska et al. 2014), and empirical
research on learning processes (Erickson 1998). Starting from learning difficulties
and students’ reasoning we study educational paths and individual strategies in
relationship with conceptual stimuli (Vosniadou 2013), the role of different representations and of personal/cooperative work on specific aspects as ideal experiments.
Research and development in producing new multimedia tools and experiments
accompanied our work (Michelini 2010). We developed up to now a series of
proposals that we do not consider exhaustive.
After a discussion of the adopted approach for this goals, we list here the
proposals developed up to now, that we don’t consider exhaustive, but examples
of coherent paths in vertical perspective for modern physics in school curriculum.
We leave the discussion of learning processes activated in classroom intervention
modules and relative outcomes to the specific papers published during the researchbased implementation of the paths development (Michelini et al. 2017, 2008;
Greczyło et al. 2010; Vercellati 2010; Michelini and Stefanel 2008, 2010). Here
10 Innovation of Curriculum and Frontiers of Fundamental Physics in Secondary. . .
103