Organization of physics content knowledge for teaching purposes: From knowledge justification schemes to didactical schemes

Abstract

Argumentation in teaching and its centrality in higher education has been noted to be important. The logical order of presented content knowledge and soundness of reasoning are both essential parts of well-planned teaching. Even though coherent and sound argumentation is essential, even more important is the ability to reorganize the content structure for teaching purposes. This study investigates pre-service physics teachers’ knowledge justification schemes (identification of content knowledge) and didactical schemes about four different topics on quantum physics. The data is collected from a physics teacher preparation course which attended of N=16 pre-service physics teachers’. The knowledge justification schemes (KJS) and didactical schemes (DS) were evaluated and scored. Each pre-service teachers’ scores of KJS’s and DS’s were summed up and normalized from 0 to 1. The results suggest that successful identification of content knowledge (quality of KJS) is a pre-requisite qualified didactical scheme but the opposite never happens. The results offer new kind of understanding how scientific argumentation can be implemented in higher education and especially in teacher education. The possibilities to use argumentation as a teaching method as well as method to learn scientific knowledge in teacher education is discussed.