Abstract
High school course designed to be relevant to a ``competent outsider'' leads to curriculum design decisions that differ from those reflected in standard physics curricula.
Highlights
This article discusses the theoretical underpinnings that informed the considerations and decisions which shaped the design of a curriculum unit entitled “Electromagnetic radiation—principles, applications, and decisions” [1]
During the problematizing phase that preceded the design we identified two challenges presented by the formal goal of the unit and its target audience: (i) how to foster meaningful engagement on the part of diverse groups of “outsiders to science” with complex scientific content such as electromagnetic radiation, (ii) how to translate scientific and engineering findings related to a complex phenomenon such as electromagnetic radiation, which emerge within a context of specialized knowledge and vocabulary, into lay language without corrupting their meaning
How to translate scientific and engineering findings related to a complex phenomenon such as electromagnetic radiation, which emerge within a context of specialized knowledge and vocabulary, into lay language without corrupting their meaning [6,7]?
Summary
This article discusses the theoretical underpinnings that informed the considerations and decisions which shaped the design of a curriculum unit entitled “Electromagnetic radiation—principles, applications, and decisions” [1]. The unit includes a textbook, and an online teachers’ guide that were recently published in Hebrew and in Arabic (translation) It covers a unit (45 h) from the compulsory general science requirements for Israeli high school matriculation for students who choose not to major in any scientific topic at the advanced level. The target audience for the curriculum is high school students who by definition are “outside the STEM pipeline” [5]. For most of them, learning a specific scientific discipline at the advanced level is not even feasible in high school Either they did very poorly in their middle school science and mathematics classes (and developed strong negative feelings toward the subject the same time) or are enrolled in private schools in which the compulsory matriculation requirement is the only science track possible. We first describe the theoretical considerations that shaped and guided our thinking in addressing the challenges articulated by the research questions, and illustrate the ways in which these principles were manifested in the design of the unit
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