CHANGING THE VARIABLES: An Experiment in Physics Teaching

摘要

Preoccupation with content coverage, and its consequences, emerges as a recurring criticism of Australian physics courses over the past 20 years. Physics has become a formula-applying process bearing little relation to the real world, according to Treagust et al. (1990). From their study of physics students in a Western Australian high school, these researchers found "what formula do I use for this?" to be the most frequently-asked question. For example, while students could correctly add velocities using vector addition they had little understanding of the concept of velocity. Students had difficulty understanding the content of textbooks and often copied sections directly, even though what they wrote made little sense to them. Physics classes were typically teacher-centred where the teacher worked with the class as a whole group. Lewis and Treagust (1991), for example, report that teachers used a "teacher-centred-interrogative" strategy to "get through the course" (p13). Pressure to cover the large amount of physics content has led to a predominance of rote learning of basic facts, algorithms and definitions.