Monitoring PCK physics teachers’ strategies for Math and Physics Languages Integration: the teacher footprint.

Abstract

The last twenty years of research in Physics Education have underlined the important role of the so-called Phys-Math interplay. The lack of students’ ability, at different ages and levels, to construct the mathematical model of physical processes or to describe the physical meaning of mathematical constructs has been emphasized. The main research work is currently attributing this difficulty to the way in which these subjects are taught, with a direct connection to the teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK). The purpose of the present investigation is to examine the role of the physics teachers’ PCK in this interplay at the early stage of the physics study. To this aim, teachers’ and classes’ activities in different high schools have been observed. We report here the results of such observations, focusing in particular to the integration of the two disciplines’ languages.