Primary Physical Science for Student Teachers at Kindergarten and Primary School Levels: Part II—Implementation and Evaluation of a Course

Abstract

This is the second of two papers on a novel physical science course for student teachers that develops and uses an imaginative approach to Primary Physical Science Education. General philosophical, cognitive, developmental, and scientific issues have been presented in the first paper; here, we briefly recapitulate the most important aspects. In the main part of the current paper, we present in some detail concrete elements of the implementation of the course at three Italian universities where Primary Physical Science Education has been taught for more than 6 years. After a brief description of the course structure, we discuss which parts of macroscopic physics are taught, and how this is done in lectures and labs. Most importantly, we show how the science is entwined with methods related to pedagogy and didactics that (1) help our students approach the science and (2) can be transferred quite readily to teaching children in kindergarten and primary school. These methods include the design of direct physical experience of forces of nature, embodied simulations, writing and telling of stories of forces of nature, and design and performance of Forces-of-Nature Theater plays. The paper continues with a brief description of feedback from former students who have been teaching for some time, and an in-depth analysis of the research and teaching done by one of the students for her master thesis. We conclude the paper by summarizing aspects of both the philosophy and the design of the course that we believe to be of particular value.

Embodied Simulations of Forces of Nature and the Role of Energy in Physical Systems

“…For this reason, and because we believe that necessary concepts for physical science are embodied, we have been investigating how our bodies might be used for learning about FoN, their characteristics and actions in physical systems. This paper is an outline of scientific, cognitive, and practical aspects and work that has gone into the production of Embodied Simulations (ES) and Forces-of-Nature Theater (FoN-T) performances (see also [12,13]).…”

“…Forces of Nature [2,3,12,[14][15][16] constitute a category of phenomena we experience as agentive and powerful (see Section 2.1). Examples of FoN are wind and rain, water and air, heat and electricity, food and medicines, and gravity and motion.…”

“…In recent years, we have created designs for ES and FoN-T performances for young learners to combine direct physical experience of FoN in natural and technical settings with narrative experience, i.e., with particular forms of communicative activity between themselves and teachers who jointly attend to phenomena (Sections 3 and 4; [12,16]). ES (see Section 3) can be used to represent storage and flow (and production/destruction) of extensive quantities related to tension (i.e., differences of potentials).…”

“…However, it is important to augment the scientific list of basic forces with that of primary forces, since the latter are primary in direct physical experience. For a pedagogy of Primary Physical Science [12,16], we need to take a perspective that allows us to deal with such primary experience of lay persons (adults and children alike).…”

“…The concepts of ES and FoN-T performances that have been presented from a theoretical perspective in our paper have been tested in the context of teacher training [12,13,16,34]. The authors are developing a natural science course (focusing on physical processes) for future kindergarten and primary school teachers [12,16] that provides for student teachers to be involved in ES or in FoN-T performances. This happens directly during lectures and labs, and may be part of practice periods in school, or as didactic projects for their exams or master theses.…”