Teaching and Learning Representations in Upper Secondary Physics

This study aimed at developing teaching material and strategies emphasising representations and modelling in upper secondary physics teaching. Representations are tools for modelling and understanding representations and how these can be manipulated is therefore believed to be a prerequisite for developing modelling skills. The study, accordingly, wanted mathematical representations and modelling to be an underlying focus in physics lessons. The study worked with physics teachers over 2 years to develop and trial teaching material and strategies, and in a third year tested this material in an intervention with experimental and control classes. Research questions asked what effects the material had on teaching, how teacher conceptualised the physics curriculum and teaching from using the material, and what influence the teaching had on students’ learning. The methodology included classroom observations with video recordings and note taking, questionnaires to teachers and students, analysis of teachers’ lesson plans, notes from discussions with teachers, interviews with teachers and an achievement test to measure learning. Student questionnaire data showed increased focus on representation in the experimental classrooms as compared to the control group, but no better effect in students’ achievement score in test for using representations. Significant differences were found between schools independently of being in the intervention or not, which makes us believe teacher and teaching characteristics were more important than the teaching material. Classroom observations, for example, showed that teachers varied in doing explicit or implicit teaching of representations, having a dialogical or authoritative style of teaching, and having an interactive or no-interactive communicative approach.