Planning Curricular Proposals on Sound and Music with Prospective Secondary-School Teachers

Sound is a preferred context to build foundations on wave phenomena, one of the most important disciplinary referents in physics. It is also one of the best-set frameworks to achieve transversality, overcoming scholastic level and activating emotional aspects which are naturally connected with every day life, as well as with music and perception. Looking at sound and music by a transversal perspective - a border-line approach between science and art, is the adopted statement for a teaching proposal using meta-cognition as a strategy in scientific education. This work analyzes curricular proposals on musical acoustics, planned by prospective secondary-school teachers in the framework of a Formative Intervention Module answering the expectation of making more effective teaching scientific subjects by improving creative capabilities, as well as leading to build logical and scientific categorizations able to consciously discipline artistic activity in music students. With this aim, a particular emphasis is given to those concepts - like sound parameters and structural elements of a musical piece, which are best fitted to be addressed on a transversal perspective, involving simultaneously physics, psychophysics and music.Comment: 12 pages with 5 figures. Submitted for publication in Physics Curriculum Design, Development and Validation - GIREP 2008 book of selected papers, 200

Pupils\u2019 ideas exploration on metal electrical transport models in the informal context of an hands-on exhibit,

A wide literature considers the problem of learning relative to the electrical circuits starting from different perspectives. A lot of work has be done as concern learning difficulties on developing systemic reasoning on functioning of electric circuits, on different aspects: 1) the conceptual differentiations of charge, current, voltage, energy, 2) establishing phenomenological relations between electrostatics and electrodynamics, 3) linking macro and micro level of description of processes. Different strategies are implemented in teaching/learning proposal on this last point and to produce a systemic vision and functional reasoning. Simulations are developed to provide micro level representation both of simple circuit functioning and of electrical transport phenomena in solids, but an exploration is lacking on spontaneous pupils\u2019 ideas about microscopic models of electrical conduction. Critical details and the spontaneous angles of attach to the topic are relevant in activating learning, therefore in simple situations with electric circuits, individual interviews are submitted according to a semi-structured protocol to 10 (N=11) and 13 (N=35) year old pupils of 3 different schools in the context of an hands-on exhibit, to gain competences in the representation perspective of pupils in their first approach to the models of electrical conduction in metals

The IWB as a bridge between phenomea exploration and interpretation of electromagnetic phenomena in construction of formal thinking

The diffusion of the Interactive Whiteboard in schools is in continuous increasing, but, too often, it was simple used to catch students\u2019 attention or transpose on the \u201cbig screen\u201d the class activities. In this paper is described a pilot study regarding the development of a Module of Formative Intervention for Prospective Primary Teachers in which the IWB as the role of supporter for the creation of a powerful context in which developed formal interpretation of electromagnetic phenomena starting from the analysis of experimental situations

A didactic proposal about Rutherford backscattering spectrometry with theoretic, experimental, simulation and application activities

Rutherford backscattering spectrometry is a nuclear analysis technique widely used for materials science investigation. Despite the strict technical requirements to perform the data acquisition, the interpretation of a spectrum is within the reach of general physics students. The main phenomena occurring during a collision between helium ions\u2014with energy of a few MeV\u2014and matter are: elastic nuclear collision, elastic scattering, and, in the case of non-surface collision, ion stopping. To interpret these phenomena, we use classical physics models: material point elastic collision, unscreened Coulomb scattering, and inelastic energy loss of ions with electrons, respectively. We present the educational proposal for Rutherford backscattering spectrometry, within the framework of the model of educational reconstruction, following a rationale that links basic physics concepts with quantities for spectra analysis. This contribution offers the opportunity to design didactic specific interventions suitable for undergraduate and secondary school students

Electromagnetic phenomena and prospective primary teachers

Even if magnetism and electromagnetism are generally not addressed during the formative courses in Italy, they are part of the curricular programs in primary schools. A formative learning intervention concerning electromagnetism was conducted in the context of the physics course for Prospective Primary Teachers (PPT) held at the University of Udine. In this paper are analysed how PPT address the analysis of the electromagnetic phenomena while they are facing an experimental learning path for pupils, looking to what conceptual nuclei and the learning knots are identified and re-used by them in the design of their own learning path

Energy transformations in primary school: outcomes from a research based experimentation

Energy is a topic which appears many times in Italian curricula. The school puts a strong socioeconomical attention to protection of the environment and experts often are invited to make speeches on this topic in primary classroom. This type of approaches are those of newspapers and the common language. A vast literature has highlighted those learning difficulties linked to common sense way of looking to energy concepts and its processing (Millar R. 2005, Heron P., Michelini M. and Stefanel A., 2008). Didactic proposals on energy topic of different approaches (Kaper, W. and Goedhart, M. 2002; Hobson A. 2004) offer to the teacher the opportunity to treat this topic revisiting concepts in such a way as to help children overcome the conceptual knots (Driver R. and Warrington L. 1985; Heron et. al. 2008) that the daily context poses. In a research based experimentation the HMS (HMS - Heron et. al. 2008) approach is adopted to build the concepts of energy by means of experimental exploration, and to complete a teaching of energy based on the content offered by text book: energy form, energy production. The experimental class includes twenty three 8-year-old children of a school of Perugia, Italy. HMS educational path has been applied using Inquiry based learning strategy and monitoring learning by means of boarding diary, in(I)-out(O)- and post(P)-tests (IOP tests). Some interesting elements emerge, especially concerning transformation concept, which appears in different key-situations explored