Mathematical modeling is also physics—interdisciplinary teaching between mathematics and physics in Danish upper secondary education

Abstract

Mathematics plays a crucial role in physics. This role is brought about predominantly through the building, employment, and assessment of mathematical models, and teachers and educators should capture this relationship in the classroom in an effort to improve students’ achievement and attitude in both physics and mathematics. But although there are overwhelming amounts of literature on modeling in science and mathematics education, the interdisciplinary position is seldom addressed explicitly. Furthermore, there has been a striking lack of exposure of the question of how future teachers, who are largely educated in a mono-disciplinary fashion, can best become equipped to introduce genuinely interdisciplinary teaching activities to their future pupils. This paper presents some preliminary reflections upon a graduate course, which aims to prepare future physics and mathematics teachers for interdisciplinary teaching, and which has been designed on the basis of influential theoretical expositions of the concept of interdisciplinarity.