A LITERATURE REVIEW ON APPLIED PHYSICS IN MEDICINE IN THE CONTEXT OF TEACHING.

This paper derives from an extensive review of literature on physics applied to medicine in 41 journals CAPES Qualis A1, A2, and B1, 15 were Brazilian and 26 international ones, between the years 2000 to 2012. Such review showed that this research area is underexplored since only 51 papers approached this subject, 24 in Brazilian journals and 27 in international ones. None of them used an epistemological framework and only one was based on a learning theory. Most of these articles (29) were written by professionals that were not related to the education area, which might explain the observed lack of theoretical and epistemological frameworks. Physics applied to medicine offers a large potential for the teaching of physics since health situations might be used to help students add more meanings to physical concepts. Thus, additional studies based on learning theories and epistemological views of science are needed and their focus should be on applied research so as to involve the production of potentially meaningful materials to help students achieve meaningful learning in physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]