Physics Pre-service Teachers’ Approaches to Scientific Investigations by Data Exploration

Thomas Schubatzky,Claudia Haagen-Schützenhöfer,Benjamin Bock

doi:10.29333/ejmste/8536

Thomas Schubatzky, Claudia Haagen-Schützenhöfer + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/8536

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Abstract

This article reports how physics pre-service teachers (PSTs) organize their investigations during an exploratory data analysis scenario, which we call scientific investigations by data exploration. In order to analyze the PSTs’ investigations, we developed a learning environment in which learners investigate aspects influencing the particulate matter concentration in an Austrian city. Audio documentation and written learner protocols were analyzed using qualitative content analyses, resulting in flowcharts describing the different types of investigations the PSTs conducted. In this analysis, we differentiate between investigations on a micro-level (a single investigation), and investigations on a macro-level. Findings show that the pre-service teachers follow three different approaches: some always start their investigations with a research question, some switch between exploratory and targeted investigations and a few conducted only exploratory investigations. In this article we provide exploratory insights into the strategies students use.

Highlights

Due to the increasing importance of information technology, the 21st century is referred to as the information or data age
Draw conclusions based on empirical evidence which relate to the research question
We introduce the learning environment which was based on the theoretical ideas discussed in the previous section

Summary

Introduction

Due to the increasing importance of information technology, the 21st century is referred to as the information or data age. Digitalization helps to collect large amounts of data more than ever before. In many areas of science, large amounts of data enable new research branches. Many research groups and governmental agencies make their research or environmental data accessible via online data repositories or by providing data at official homepages. This can be data from an experiment conducted during research (e.g. from CERN), meteorological data like temperature or humidity and environmental data like air pollution (particulate matter, NOX, etc.)

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