LEADING SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS TO FACE THE DISCIPLINARY, EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND SOCIETAL CHALLENGES OF CLIMATE CHANGE: DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF MULTI-DIMENSIONAL TEACHING/LEARNING EXPERIENCES

The scientific community has been debating climate change (CC) for over two decades. In the light of certain arguments put forward by the aforesaid community, the EU has recommended a set of innovative reforms to science teaching, such as incorporating environmental issues into the scientific curriculum, thereby helping to make schools a place of civic education. However, despite these European recommendations, relatively little emphasis is still given to climate change within science curricula. The main goal of the research project described in this thesis is to study if, how and why the scientific contents related to CC could be reconstructed so as to integrate the many dimensions involved in the issue. Specifically, the project set out to create and test innovative materials and activities for secondary school students, designed to foster: i) effective and meaningful understanding of the concepts involved in CC (disciplinary dimension); ii) a growing personal involvement in environmental issues supported also by the maturation of rational arguments for moving consciously through the political, economical, social and ethical dimensions (societal dimension); iii) epistemological reflections aimed at problematizing the traditional and outdated image of science which is still widespread among citizens (epistemological dimension). In the design and analysis of the materials, we start from the conjecture that behind many conceptual difficulties and psychological barriers lie particular epistemological obstacles related to a na\uefve and stereotypical view of science. In order to reach the main goal, the work has been organized according to four research questions (RQs): RQ_1: What operational criteria can be identified for reconstructing physics so as to integrate the many dimensions considered in the main goal? RQ_2: (a) Which models of greenhouse effect and GW are effective for implementing the criteria identified? (b) What experimental activities can be designed in order to promote an inquiry-based approach to the study of environmental issues, and to help students understand the models and their multi-dimensionality? RQ_3: How do secondary school students react to the proposed materials? Are the materials effective in achieving the main goal of the research? RQ_4: Which analytic methods can be used to investigate the multiple dimensions of a teaching/learning classroom experience? In Chapter 1, the analysis of a selection of research papers and international reports is presented. The selected papers and reports concern: the conceptual difficulties that students usually encounter in dealing with physics concepts related to CC; the sociological and behavioural reactions of citizens facing CC; the crucial points regarding the scientific debate on CC; the status of the research on modelling in science education. The match among the main results in so many different research fields led us to point out some design principles which guided the process of instructional design of a multidimensional proposal on climate change intended for upper secondary school students (grade 11th, 12th and 13th). The design principles, the teaching materials and the developed conceptual path are described in chapter 2. The multidimensional conceptual path was implemented in four different teaching experiences and many data were collected in order to keep tuned the many dimensions involved in the study. The contexts of implementation, the role of each one and the data sources properly designed are described in chapter 3. The materials and the data tools were initially validated in a pilot-study which aimed to test and revise both the teaching materials and the data sources (chapter 4). On the basis of the results of this pilot-study, the materials have been reviewed in order to emphasize the epistemological dimension. Specifically, the results led us to make the epistemological fil rouge on the models and modelling stronger and more evident; to revise (in form and content) the lesson on complexity; and to insert specific tools of investigations aimed at indepth investigation of the epistemological dimension. The data collection and data analysis focused initially on the single dimensions (conceptual, behavioural, epistemological) and later on the correlations among them. This strategy implied the development of new and original analytic tools able to bootstrap from the data results related to each dimension, but also analytic techniques that could render the results of each dimension comparable to each other (chapters 5-6-7). As a global result, the analyses highlighted a positive overall trend both on the three dimensions considered individually and with respect to the identification of positive influences and impacts among the different dimensions. Nevertheless, some critical elements emerged from the analyses. As far as the disciplinary dimension is concerned (chapter 5), the conceptual path revealed to be effective in providing a chance i) to resolve the problem of confusing climate change with different environmental phenomena, like the ozone layer depletion and general pollution, and ii) to relate the greenhouse effect to the properties of absorbance, reflectance and transmittance. The analysis, however, revealed the permanence in the students of conceptual difficulties which are well-documented in the research literature, such as i) the difficulty in managing the concept of emission and ii) the confusion between heat and radiation. These two problems are those in which there is the greatest discrepancy between common sense and scientific thinking and, as our other studies on thermodynamics show, they must be addressed indepth from the moment that the basic physics concepts of thermodynamics and electromagnetism are introduced. However, the type of analysis we were able to carry out did not allow us to thoroughly investigate the nature of these unresolved problems. As far as the societal dimension is concerned, the data analyses showed positive behavioural responses in all the teaching experiments. The analysis of the mutual interaction between knowledge and behavioural response (chapter 6) strengthens this result. Moreover, the evolution of a certain type of knowledge and, mainly, the introduction of the epistemological perspective of complexity appeared potentially able to provide students with the cultural tools necessary to rationally navigate through the jungle of ideological/media wars about environmental issues. The epistemological dimension constituted the particularly original feature of this research work (chapter 7). As we said above, this study originated from the conjecture that climate change represents not only a societal and disciplinary but also an epistemological challenge. Scientific debates imply sophisticated epistemological argumentations which refer, more or less implicitly, to a refined way of looking at modelling in climate science. In the light of the results of our analysis, we can assert that, under certain conditions, specific epistemological know-how can positively impact not only productive disciplinary engagement, but also a more personal and authentic involvement in climate change. The decision to keep together the societal and conceptual dimensions, thanks to the epistemological dimension, proved to be a successful choice. It offered the students the opportunity to understand the increasing importance of the role of models and modelling in coping with scientific issues that have direct impact on the social aspects of people's lives (e.g. climate change, earthquakes, nuclear physics, modern physics applied to medical studies). Besides the epistemological dimension, the other element of originality of the research work is the construction of new analytic methodologies constructed to exploit the data and correlations between the different dimensions. These new methods can make, in our opinion, a positive contribution to the current debate on methodology in science education research

What inspires young people to study physics? Results from the WG1 interviews survey

The talk will focus on the main results of an Interview based Survey of 1st Year University Physics Students, carried out within Working Group 1 (WG1) of the HOPE project. Among the HOPE activities, 112 interviews have been conducted in 16 universities, in order to investigate in some depth the factors that inspire young people to study physics and to identify possible critical factors which can produce the dropping out.The individual interviews have been carried out on a selection of students who had previously answered the WG1 Questionnaire on the inspirational factors, led by Gareth Jones from the Imperial College, London. In the talk, we will show how the interviews helped us to unpack the main results achieved with the questionnaire survey. In particular, we will present a comprehensive picture of \u201ccuriosity\u201d which turned out to be the predominant motivating factor and we will show how the interviews can throw extra light on reasons for comparatively low scores for factors like (i) enhancing employment prospects, (ii) effect of physics teacher, (iii) scientists in the family

Making sense of youth futures narratives: Recognition of emerging tensions in students' imagination of the future

In this era of great uncertainty, imagining the future may be challenging, especially for young people. In science education, the interest in future-oriented education is now emerging, research needs, however, to keep eyes on youngsters' future perceptions and on the development of a future literacy. In this article, starting from a sample of individual students' narratives about their future daily life in 2040, we aim to delineate which ways of grappling with the future can be observed in the essays and which methodological tools are suited to operationalize their identification and characterization. The analysis led to the definition of "polarization" and "complexification" attitudes that represent the ways in which the students' narratives are positioned with respect to a bunch of dichotomies: personal-societal, functional-aesthetics oriented, good-bad, natural-artificial, and certain-uncertain. Moreover, with this study, we provide a contribution to the methodological reflection that deals with the collection and analysis of data, when students' future perceptions need to be investigated. Discussing the limits of the current data collection tool, we introduce the design of a SenseMaker (R) questionnaire which contributed to feeding a collaboration with #OurFutures project, recently launched by the European Commission to collect future narratives all around Europe

Student interviews on inspirational and drop-out factors progress report (Sub-Group WG1-B)

Progress report on the survey on inspirational and drop-out factors we carried out, within the activities of WG1, through individual interviews to physics students. In particular, we present: 1) the research groups involved in the survey and in the data analysis; 2) the sample; 3) the research questions; 4) the quantitative and qualitative research methods of data analysis we are designing; 4) the preliminary analysis and the problematic issues we are dealing with; 5) discussion, implications and future plans

Microvesicles secreted from equine amniotic cells and their potential role in in vitro cell tendon repair

The regenerative mechanisms ascribed to mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are classified into 3 categories: differentiating into damaged cell types, supplying nutrients, and improving survival/functions of the endogenous cells via paracrine actions. However, because of the inhospitable microenvironment of the injured tissues, a proportion of the implanted MSCs may quickly die, suggesting that other mechanisms might be present. This notion is supported by the overlapping beneficial effect (in terms of time of healing) resulted after the injection of AMCs or of amniotic mesenchymal cells - conditioned medium (AMC-CM) in equine spontaneous injured tendons and ligaments. Microvesicles (MVs) released by cells are an integral component of the cell-to-cell communication network involved in tissue regeneration.In the present study, MVs secreted by AMCs were investigated with Nanosigth instrument and TEM. Then, the in vitro incorporation of MVs into equine tendon cells was studied by a dose-response curve. Lastly, the ability of MVs to counteract an in vitro inflammatory process induced by lipolysaccaride on tendon cells was studied evaluating the expression of pro-inflammatory genes like metallopeptidase (MPP) 1 and 13, and prostaglandin-endoperoxide synthase 2 (COX2). Results demonstrated that AMCs secreted MVs ranging in size from 100 to 1000 nm with a prevalence of 100-200 nm large MVs. Tendon cells were able to uptake them with an inverse relationship between concentration and time. The greatest incorporation was detectable at 40x106 MVs/ml after 72h. MVs induced down-regulation of MMP1 and MMP13, suggesting that they may have contributed, along with soluble factors, to in vivo tendon regeneration

Understanding first-year students’ curiosity and interest about physics : Lessons learned from the HOPE project

This paper focuses on results of an interview based survey of first-year university physics students, carried out within the EU Horizons in Physics Education (HOPE) project (http://hopenetwork.eu/). 94 interviews conducted in 13 universities have been analyzed to investigate the factors that inspire young people to study physics. In particular, the main motivational factor, which was proven to consist of personal interest and curiosity, was unfolded into different categories and detailed interest profiles were produced. The results are arguably useful to help academic curriculum developers and teaching personnel in physics departments to provide guidance to students in developing and focusing their interest towards specific sub-fields and/or to design targeted recruitment and outreach initiatives.Peer reviewe

Content Analysis for Recognizing Threads in Conceptual Change Research

Since its origins - the publication of the milestone paper of Posner, Strike, Hewson and Gertzog in 1982 - conceptual change has been one of the main research issues in science education. The literature on conceptual change is wide and some researchers have already tried to identify the main threads in this research strand. In some review papers the main articles have been classified according to different criteria, like “fragmentation and coherence”. Our work stems from these overview papers and aims at contributing to the literature review on conceptual change research. In particular, we will present and discuss a new method for identifying research threads or currents of thought. The analysis of the collection uses both a quantitative linguistic software and an algorithm inspired by the classical information retrieval procedure LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing). The selection of the terms to build the reference dictionary needed for the algorithm is semi-automatic. In the paper, we discuss the extent to which such software and algorithm are useful for (i) aggregating and classifying similar papers in terms of topics; and (ii) checking the coherence between the results of the automatic classification procedure and the effective differences among the papers, in order to visualize more deeply the trends in conceptual change research

TOWARD A THEORETICAL EXPLANATION OF THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN THE COLLECTIVE AND THE INDIVIDUAL DYNAMICS IN PHYSICS LEARNING

The paper concerns the analysis of a successful classroom experience where the students made evident progress in appropriating physics knowledge according to personal approaches. The data refer to the implementation of a teaching proposal on thermodynamics in a class of 20 students (17 year-olds) of a scientifically-oriented secondary school in Italy. The main result of the analysis is the construction of a definition of appropriation, able to act as operative tool for recognising whether students appropriate physics in real classroom contexts. The study is methodologically framed within the Design Studies. According to such a framework, the paper, although empirically-based, is theoretically-oriented: it is the first step of an iterative process aimed at developing a \u201chumble theory\u201d for explaining when, how and why appropriation is triggered and supported in real classrooms

Experimenting with Prompts vs. Recipe-Style Experimenting: Impact on Motivation and Achievement

Stiller C, Wilde M. Experimenting with Prompts vs. Recipe-Style Experimenting: Impact on Motivation and Achievement. In: Levrini O, Tasquier G, eds. Electronic Proceedings of the ESERA 2019 Conference. The Beauty and Pleasure of Understanding: Engaging With Contemporary Challenges Through Science Education. Vol Part 2/Strand 2. Bologna: ALMA MATER STUDIORUM – University of Bologna; 2020: 159-168.Experimentation is one of the most important scientific working methods in biology. However, on the one hand, students can perceive experimentation as very complex, especially when students were offered a high degree of autonomy. On the other hand, fully structured recipestyle inquiry processes seem to be inappropriate to promote the development of students' scientific reasoning skills. Consequently, to support experimentation optimally and foster an autonomous working practice a combination of instructional support and open inquiry is needed. Prompts provide a high degree of freedom and give instructional guidance by offering hints. Accordingly, prompts allow students to work on a task autonomously and with an appropriate degree of support. The research question in this study focusses on, whether the provision of autonomy in combination with support by prompts during experimentation influences motivation and knowledge gain. In the quasi-experimental study (N=151) students in grades 5 and 6 were randomly assigned to two treatment conditions: recipe-style experimentation and experimentation supported by prompt-cards. The results showed that the students of the ‘prompt-group” reported significant lower values in basic need satisfaction (subscale ‘competence’ and ‘autonomy’) and in motivation (subscales ‘perceived choice’, ‘perceived competence’ and ‘interest/enjoyment’). Likewise, the students did not benefit from prompts in the knowledge gain. Summarizing, for young students, experimenting with strong guidance seems to be more beneficial than using prompts. The fulfilment of the need for competence as well as the perceived competence was lower in the ‘prompt-group’ than in the ‘full-structured group’. Thus, these students did not seem to be able to cope with the demands of a more open learning environment. Presumably, it is necessary to improve the students' competence, e.g. by gradually increasing the degree of autonomy in experimenting, in order to enable students to perceive themselves as competent

An epistemological approach to align physics teaching with the society of acceleration and uncertainty

In this paper, we present an epistemological approach to physics ed- ucation research that was progressively developed to build teaching modules aimed at aligning physics teaching with the society of acceleration and uncertainty. This approach is characterised by the choice to exploit the epistemological richness of physics in order to regenerate disciplinary knowledge, and make the discipline a locus wherein to develop the personal identities and competences needed to nav- igate our current complex society. The approach combines different frameworks, from science education to learning sciences, including the model of educational re- construction, coordination class theory for conceptual change, the meta-theory of boundary for interdisciplinarity, and the family resemblance approach (reconceptu- alised for the nature of science). We first describe the process that led us to outline the approach, before referring to some modules (in particular concerning special relativity, thermodynamics and climate change) to discuss our design principles. Specifically, we will argue how these principles represent a compass to make the epistemology of physics resonate with students’ personal processes of sense-making, as well as grounding in the disciplines the development of sustainability competences such as embracing complexity, envisioning futures and enacting creative thinking