Co-invention Project in the Physics Curriculum on the Lower Secondary School

Abstract

As an integral part of the innovation of Physics Curriculum, we consider involvement of a co-invention project - a small teamwork of the pupils on the tasks developed by themselves - project, lasting 10-15 teaching hours, with focused goal oriented on innovation of a product. Pupils are scaffolded in well-designed learning environment, by well-designed printed material and specially trained physics teacher in an equipped physics laboratory. As our endeavour to meet such a goal, we have started by initial pilot projects, in which 13-years old pupils constructed products from a very limited material, using a limited equipment. The project itself is directed to take into consideration each of the sights - scientific (physics as a school subject, part of the sciences, how does the nature work); engineering (physics as a school subject, part of the technology education); collaborative design (work of small teams, which consider also whole school community and experts from out of schools environment) and discussing entrepreneurial practices (considering usable products, create marketing plan). The pupils are systematically lead to develop each of these four sights via six stages - idea generation, activity (planning, designing), knowledge seeking, evaluation of invention, justifying solution, knowledge building. Such a complex activity performed by 13 years old pupils can be considered as too ambitious. Of course, we are modifying whole physics education and we are preparing pupils to be able to work in teams, discuss, measure physical quantities, articulate their ideas and work with various sources of information. In the article, we proudly inform about happy pupils, which like physics (and also school subject - physics) and prove their knowledge on a higher level than their peers, after one year of testing our new methodologies. Moreover, we start to measure the level of their engineering competences and hypothesize, that it should be developed better, than of their peers educated by traditional means.