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This qualitative, questionnaire and interview-based study explores how pre-service physics teachers think about the role that mathematics plays in the teaching and learning of physics at university and school level and whether these views change during their pre-service teacher education. Many of the pre-service teachers were aware of the complex relationship between these two subjects at university level, noting that success in mathematics can often mask a lack of conceptual understanding in physics and that there can be a disconnect between the physics and mathematical aspects of undergraduate courses. At school level, many stressed the importance of a focus on conceptual understanding and that technical competence in mathematics lessons does not always transfer to physics lessons. Almost all the pre-service physics teachers changed their views during the year, often in response to their classroom experiences. As they became more attuned to the difficulties students faced with respect to the mathematical challenges involved in learning physics, many took a more pragmatic position that balanced the role of mathematics in physics with acceptance that they must respond to student needs. We suggest that these changing views can be framed in terms of two re-orientations. A disciplinary re-orientation where the role that mathematics plays in order to be successful in physics is reassessed, and a pedagogical re-orientation that attends to pragmatic, teaching considerations. We recommend that direct attention to the role of mathematics in school physics should be an integral part of pre-service physics teacher education in order to encourage these re-orientations.

High school physics teachers have a difficult job to do. On the one hand, they are charged with contributing to the creation of a scientifically literate society, while on the other they play a pivotal role in the recruitment of future physicists. Given the importance of this dual role, one might expect that the training of future physics teachers would be a priority for any physics department. However, research suggests that this is often not the case. While concerns have been raised about future physics teachers' understanding of physics content, less work has focussed on the sociocultural experiences of the learning environments trainees meet when learning undergraduate physics. This case study examines how a sample of trainee physics teachers perceive learning undergraduate physics content together with engineering and physics bachelor students in a large, high-status, research-oriented physics department. The findings aim to be of interest to physics lecturers when examining their own practice. We interviewed 17 trainee physics teachers about their experiences of learning undergraduate physics, how they perceived the relevance of their physics courses for their future role as teachers, and how this affected their physics learning. Here, we identified four central themes of the students' experiences: (1) teacher programme invisibility, (2) passive classroom culture, (3) perceived relevance of physics courses, and (4) no incentive to do well in physics. We discuss how this study illustrates the potential struggles trainee physics teachers may encounter when learning undergraduate physics. We also suggest how our findings may be used to inform the practice of university physics lecturers who come in contact with trainee physics teachers, and comment on the structure and organization of physics teacher education as a whole.

This study explores the culture of physics departments in Sweden in relation to physicsteacher education. The commitment of physics departments to teacher education iscrucial for the quality of physics teacher education and the way in which physicslecturers’ talk about teacher education is significant, since it can affect trainees’ physicslearning and the choice to become a physics teacher. We analysed interviews witheleven physicists at four Swedish universities, looking for assumptions in relation toteacher training that are expressed in their talk. We found five tacit assumptions aboutphysics teacher training, that together paint a picture of trainee physics teachersmoving in the "wrong" direction, against the tide of physics. These are the PhysicsExpert Assumption: the purpose of all undergraduate physics teaching is to createphysics experts. The Content Assumption : the appropriate physics content for futureschool physics teachers is the same as that for future physicists. The GoalAssumption: the role of a school physics teacher is to create new physicists. TheStudent Assumption: students who become physics teachers do not have the abilityto make it as successful physicists. The Teaching Assumption: If you know physicsthen it’s not difficult to teach it. We suggest that these five assumptions, if perpetuatedwithout reflection, risk working against high quality physics teacher education. Forphysics teacher educators, our results can be used as a lens to reflect on the localdepartmental culture and its effect on teacher education.

This article reports the results of an empirical study exploring the discourses of physics teacher educators. We ask how the expressed understandings of a physics teacher education programme in the talk of teacher educators potentially support the identity construction of new teachers. Nine teacher educators from different sections of a physics teacher programme in Sweden were interviewed. The concept of discourse models was used to operationalise how the discourses of the teacher education programme potentially enable the performance of different physics teacher identities. The analysis resulted in the construction of four discourse models that could be seen to be both enabling and limiting the kinds of identity performances trainee physics teachers can enact. Knowledge of the models thus potentially empowers trainee physics teachers to understand the different goals of their educational programme and from there make informed choices about their own particular approach to becoming a professional physics teacher. We also suggest that for teacher educators, knowledge of the discourse models could facilitate making conscious, informed decisions about their own teaching practice.

A social semiotic lens is used to characterise aspects of representationalcompetence for a discipline such as physics, to providescience teachers with a practical suggestion about how studentlearning might be organised to develop representational competence.We suggest that representational competence for someareas of science can be characterised in terms of the ability toappropriately interpret and produce a set of disciplinary-scientificrepresentations of real-world phenomena, and link these to scientificconcepts. This is because many areas of science are based oncreating scientific explanations of real-world observations. We thenshow how this characterisation may be applied by performing asocial semiotic audit of what it entails to become representationallycompetent in one particular semiotic system (graphs) for one particulararea of physics (1-D kinematics). Using this audit, we generatethree open-ended tasks expected to help students develop representationalcompetence in this area and empirically demonstratetheir potential effectiveness. Building on this example, we suggestthat our description of how a disciplinary social semiotic audit maybe used to construct open-ended student learning tasks potentiallyprovides one way for teachers to think about the development ofrepresentational competence in other semiotic systems and otherareas of science.

In this paper, we show that introductory physics students may initially conceptualise Cartesian coordinate systems as being fixed in a standard orientation. Giving consideration to the role that experiences of variation play in learning, we also present an example of how this learning challenge can be effectively addressed. Using a fine-grained analytical description, we show how students can quickly come to appreciate coordinate system movability. This was done by engaging students in a conceptual learning task that involved them working with a movable magnetometer with a printed-on set of coordinate axes to determine the direction of a constant field (Earth's magnetic field).

Abstract

In this presentation I will briefly describe the history of physics education research (PER), explain my own research interests and suggest the alternative discipline-based education research as an alternative to pedagogy or didactics when dealing with training courses for univerity lecturers.

References

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Airey, J., & Linder, C. (2009). "A disciplinary discourse perspective on university science learning: Achieving fluency in a critical   constellation of modes." Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 46(1), 27-49.

Airey, J. & Linder, C. Airey, J. & Linder, C. (2017). Social Semiotics in University Physics Education. In Treagust, D. Duit, R. &   Fischer, H. Representations in Physics Education, pp. 95-122, Springer.

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Airey, J., & Eriksson, U. (2019). Unpacking the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram: A Social Semiotic Analysis of the Disciplinary and   Pedagogical Affordances of a Central Resource in Astronomy, Designs for Learning, 11(1), 99–107. DOI:   https://doi.org/10.16993/dfl.137

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This study aims to investigate the perspectives of stakeholders in and around the physics teacher education system in England and how these may shape the formation of physics teacher professional identity. Interviewing teachers during their initial teacher education as well as other stakeholders, we asked all participants about their view of physics, physics teachers and the teaching profession. Analysis of the responses generated four claims and from them, considerations for physics teacher educators.

When qualifying as a secondary school physics teacher in England, the statutory guidance is generic and very little subject-specific detail is offered. There is a lack of a clear, shared understanding of the subject-specific attributes that newly-qualified physics teachers are expected to have. This exploratory study reports the findings of a questionnaire that asked various stakeholders—including physics teachers, trainees and teacher trainers—to identify what they regard as the attributes of a 'good' physics teacher. From our analysis we present a set of attributes of a good physics teacher and consider how these may be grouped into themes that could provide a way to explore these expectations. We pay particular attention to the subject-specific, and consider how our findings align with the existing literature base.