Teachers’ beliefs about improving transfer of algebraic skills from mathematics into physics in senior pre-university education

Turşucu, Süleyman; Spandaw, Jeroen; Flipse, Steven M.; Jongbloed, Geurt; Vries, Marc J. de

doi:10.1080/09500693.2017.1296981

Cited by 15 publications

(41 citation statements)

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“…For instance, mathematics and physics teachers who may naïvely think that transfer occurs automatically when students are extensively trained in mathematics class in the application of basic algebraic skills. In practice, however, they spend time on re-teaching mathematics in physics class, precious time they would rather spend on teaching physics, which may be frustrating them (Roorda, 2012;Turşucu, Spandaw, Flipse, & de Vries, 2017). Thus, naïve beliefs are harmful for transfer.…”

Section: Why Do Students Lack Transfer?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, our extensive literature research yielded only our previous studies on both individual beliefs and core beliefs about transfer of algebraic skills from mathematics in physics (Turşucu et al, 2017;Turşucu, Spandaw, Flipse, & de Vries, 2018).…”

Section: Article Aim and Central Research Questionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many teachers are unaware of curricula (e.g. Turşucu et al, 2017): for them textbooks are the curriculum.…”

Section: Curricula Teachers and Textbooks In Spementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the previous two studies, we first investigated teachers' individual beliefs (Turşucu et al, 2017) and then teachers' core beliefs (Turşucu et al, 2018) about transfer of algebraic skills from mathematics in physics in SPE. In this regard, we interviewed 10 mathematics and 10 physics teachers.…”

Section: Previous Two Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This resulted in the hierarchical common code tree for both mathematics and physics teachers containing 9 core themes (Coherence, Curriculum, Education, Pedagogy of algebra, Relation between scientific subjects, School subjects, Teacher, The use of textbooks and Transfer), and 28 sub themes including the continuum of approximately thirteen hundred teachers' beliefs (Turşucu et al, 2017). The latter consisted of aspects influencing both students' demonstration of CME and transfer.…”

Section: First Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Teachers’ beliefs systems about improving transfer of algebraic skills from mathematics into physics in senior pre-university education

Turşucu

Spandaw

Flipse

et al. 2018

International Journal of Science Education

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Senior pre-university education (SPE) students experience difficulties applying mathematics to physics. This paper reports the outcome of an online explorative quantitative study of teachers' belief systems about improving transfer of algebraic skills from mathematics into physics, conducted among 503 mathematics and physics teachers working in SPE. We used a questionnaire with 16 beliefs about improving transfer, and asked teachers to select a top 5 and distribute 50 points among them. We used agglomerative hierarchical clustering to cluster qualified SPE teachers with more than 10 years of teaching experience. We found 3 large clusters, each containing naïve and desirable beliefs about transfer. These clusters turned out to be rather coherent sets of beliefs. Hence, these clusters can be interpreted as belief systems, to a certain extent justifying Ernest's [(1991). The philosophy of mathematics education. London: Falmer.] idea to cluster teachers based on their belief systems. We found relations between our groups and those of Ernest. Since naïve beliefs turn out to be weak in each cluster, science teacher educators can help science teachers to change their harmful naïve beliefs, into desirable transfer enhancing beliefs. Furthermore, we discuss some implications of our results for science teacher educators, curricula, teachers and textbooks.

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Section: Why Do Students Lack Transfer?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Article Aim and Central Research Questionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many teachers are unaware of curricula (e.g. Turşucu et al, 2017): for them textbooks are the curriculum.…”

Section: Curricula Teachers and Textbooks In Spementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Previous Two Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: First Studymentioning

confidence: 99%