The Use of Thought Experiments in Teaching Physics to Upper Secondary-Level Students: Two examples from the theory of relativity

The present study focuses on the way thought experiments (TEs) can be used as didactical tools in teaching physics to upper secondary-level students. A qualitative study was designed to investigate to what extent the TEs called 'Einstein's elevator' and 'Einstein's train' can function as tools in teaching basic concepts of the theory of relativity to upper secondary-level students. The above TEs were used in the form they are presented by Einstein himself and by Landau and Rumer in books that popularize theories of physics. The research sample consisted of 40 Greek students, divided into 11 groups of three to four students each. The findings of this study reveal that the use of TEs in teaching the theory of relativity can help students realize situations which refer to a world beyond their everyday experience and develop syllogisms according to the theory. In this way, students can grasp physics laws and principles which demand a high degree of abstract thinking, such as the principle of equivalence and the consequences of the constancy of the speed of light to concepts of time and space. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Cultural and educational dimensions reflected in books popularizing scientific knowledge - A case study: The sky, a 19th century book popularizing astronomy

The present work is concerned with one of the most successful books popularizing astronomy of the last half of the 19th century, published in France under the title L' Astronomie Populaire. The book was translated into Greek and was the first book, out of 100, which was published in order to be a part of a popular library meant to educate the Greek lay public. The study of the book reveals some interesting points which could be of use in science education. The kind of language the book uses to communicate with the public, the metaphors and analogies used to make the new knowledge accessible to the public, the unfolding of the syllogisms on which the new knowledge was based, the epistemological view held in the book, are some of these points. © Springer 2005

Secondary Students' Understanding of Basic Ideas of Special Relativity

A major topic that has marked 'modern physics' is the theory of special relativity (TSR). The present work focuses on the possibility of teaching the basic ideas of the TSR to students at the upper secondary level in such a way that they are able to understand and learn the ideas. Its aim is to investigate students' learning processes towards the two axioms of the theory (the principle of relativity and the invariance of the speed of light) and their consequences (the relativity of simultaneity, time dilation and length contraction). Based on an analysis of physics college textbooks, on a review of the relevant bibliography and on a pilot study, a teaching and learning sequence consisting of five sessions was developed. To collect the data, experimental interviews (the so-called teaching experiment) were used. The teaching experiment may be viewed as a Piagetian clinical interview that is deliberately employed as a teaching and learning situation. The sample consisted of 40 10th grade students (aged 15-16). The data were collected by taping and transcribing the 'interviews', as well as from two open-ended questionnaires filled out by each student, one before and the other after the sessions. Methods of qualitative content analysis were applied. The results show that upper secondary education students are able to cope with the basic ideas of the TSR, but there are some difficulties caused by the following student conceptions: (a) there is an absolute frame of reference, (b) objects have fixed properties and (c) the way events happen is independent of what the observers perceive. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

Cultural and educational dimensions reflected in books popularizing scientific knowledge - A case study: The sky, a 19th century book popularizing astronomy

The present work is concerned with one of the most successful books popularizing astronomy of the last half of the 19th century, published in France under the title L' Astronomie Populaire. The book was translated into Greek and was the first book, out of 100, which was published in order to be a part of a popular library meant to educate the Greek lay public. The study of the book reveals some interesting points which could be of use in science education. The kind of language the book uses to communicate with the public, the metaphors and analogies used to make the new knowledge accessible to the public, the unfolding of the syllogisms on which the new knowledge was based, the epistemological view held in the book, are some of these points. © Springer 2005

Addressing k-5 students' and pre-service elementary teachers' conceptions of seasonal change

In this paper, primary school students' and pre-service teachers' ideas of seasonal change are investigated. The research was carried out in nine primary schools in Athens and in the Primary Education Department of the University of Athens. Written reports were used for gathering data while students also had the opportunity to support their answers with drawings. The results showed the following. (1) Pre-service teachers address notions which involve the movement of the Sun and/or the Earth, while primary school students address human centred, tautological and phenomenological notions as well. (2) Both primary school students and pre-service teachers mainly adopt two schemes of explanation: alterations in the distance between the Sun and the Earth and alterations in the Earth-Sun relative orientation/illumination. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd

Scientific literacy in second chance schools: Training science teachers to design context-based curricula

Second Chance Schools (SCSs) were established in Greece in 1997 in an effort to provide literacy skills to adult school dropouts in order to facilitate their reintegration into society. Science teachers working in SCSs face the challenge of developing scientific literacy-oriented curricula according to the needs of their students. However, empirical data show that most teachers, influenced by their previous classroom experiences in formal education, design theory-laden curricula that aim to introduce SCSs’ students to the content of science. This study presents the methodology and results of a two-day constructivist teacher-training workshop which is aimed at changing seven SCSs’ science teachers’ criteria when selecting and designing topics for their scientific literacy curricula. The analysis and evaluation of the workshop indicated that while science teachers were able to make the critical shift to the selection of topics in line with students’ needs (the new topics focused on real-context science-related situations relevant to their students’ personal, vocational and social experiences), weaknesses were detected in the science teachers’ practices related to the nature of science and the use of scientific knowledge within the context-based issues. The results of this pilot study may be useful to similar teacher training programs that focus on the designing of innovative curricula. Copyright © 2020 by authors, all rights reserved

Students' views and attitudes towards the communication code used in press articles about science

The present research was designed to investigate the reaction of secondary school students to the communication code that the press uses in science articles: it attempts to trace which communication techniques can be of potential use in science education. The sample of the research consists of 351 secondary school students. The research instrument is a questionnaire, which attempts to trace students' preferences regarding newspaper science articles, to explore students' attitudes towards the science articles published in the press and to investigate students' reactions towards four newspaper science articles. These articles deal with different aspects of science and reflect different communication strategies. The results of the research reveal that secondary school students view the communication codes used in press science articles as being more interesting and comprehensible than those of their science textbooks. Predominantly, they do not select science articles that present their data in a scientific way (diagrams and abstract graphs). On the contrary, they do select science articles and passages in them, which use an emotional/'poetic' language with a lot of metaphors and analogies to introduce complex science concepts. It also seems that the narrative elements found in popularized science articles attract students' interest and motivate them towards further reading. © 2005 Taylor & Francis

From Earth to Heaven: Using 'Newton's Cannon' Thought Experiment for Teaching Satellite Physics

Thought Experiments are powerful tools in both scientific thinking and in the teaching of science. In this study, the historical Thought Experiment (TE) 'Newton's Cannon' was used as a tool to teach concepts relating to the motion of satellites to students at upper secondary level. The research instruments were: (a) a teaching-interview designed and implemented according to the Teaching Experiment methodology and (b) an open-ended questionnaire administered to students 2 weeks after the teaching-interview. The sample consisted of forty students divided into eleven groups. The teaching and learning processes which occurred during the teaching-interview were recorded and analyzed. The findings of the present study show that the use of the TE helped students to mentally construct a physical system which has nothing to do with their everyday experience (i.e. they had to imagine themselves as observers in a context in which the whole Earth was visible) and to draw conclusions about phenomena within this system. Specifically, students managed (1) to conclude that if an object is appropriately launched, it may be placed in an orbit around the Earth and to support this conclusion by giving necessary arguments, and (2) to realize that the same laws of physics describe, on the one hand, the motion of the Moon around the Earth (and the motion of other celestial bodies as well) and, on the other hand, the motion of 'terrestrial' objects (i.e. objects on the Earth, such as a tennis ball). The main difficulties students met were caused by their idea that there is no gravity in the vacuum (i.e. the area outside of the Earth's atmosphere) and also by their everyday experience, according to which it is impossible for a projectile to move continuously parallel to the ground. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht