Nature of Science Interdisciplinary Teaching at Primary School Based on Symmetry and the Search of Invariants

Abstract

The project is situated in the field of teaching physics, generally speaking, science education. It aims at studying the interplay between physics and mathematics, introducing an interdisciplinary approach based on the modern concept of symmetry or sameness within change (i.e., invariance). The interdisciplinary methods integrate the process skills common to discovery-based science and problem-based mathematics, typically of Nature of Science (NoS) modelling. We designed a teaching-learning sequence(TLS) and implemented it in an Italian primary school on a sample group (N = 96). Research conforms to pre-and post-test design with a control group. The resulting data were examined through a mixed method. We assess the effectiveness of the TLS by analysing the learning changes in the level of pupils’ knowledge of symmetry. The findings show that the pupils were in the regime of competence for grasping the changed view of symmetry. It also provides ideas that the concepts of symmetry and invariance will allow building the architecture of more extensive scientific knowledge. The study of transformations and invariants facilitates the acquisition of cognitive procedures fitting in many domains, modelling and generalization processes. This research contribution brings important suggestions for designs of successive steps in the learning path on symmetry.