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What goes around comes around: Perspectives on different physics curricula in Australia
Get PDFThe curriculum has always invoked great contestation. In one of the states in Australia, New South Wales, the high school physics curriculum (for university entry) has undergone some significant changes over the last twenty years (Georgiou & Crook, 2017). Rather than incremental changes, these changes were substantial, including attempts to include socially and culturally physics knowledge and to provide students with opportunities to undertake independent research. We discuss the nature of these changes, and how they fit into the landscape of curriculum design, in particular, how certain characteristics seem to cycle in and out of fashion. We also report on teachers’ perspectives of these changes, as reported on a survey administered in 2021, three years after the ‘new’ curriculum had been introduced. Teachers agreed on some aspects in relation to curriculum design in physics, including that it needs to be ‘rigorous’ and mathematical, however, there were also some disagreements, particularly in relation to whether the curriculum was achieving its aim to develop ‘depth’ of knowledge (NSW Education Standards Authority [NESA], 2020).
REFERENCES
Georgiou, H. & Crook, S. (2017). Watching the pendulum swing: Changes in the NSW physics curriculum and consequences for the discipline. Australian Physics, 54 (6), 214-218.
NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA), 2020 Nurturing Wonder and Igniting Passion, designs for a new school curriculum: NSW Curriculum Review online: https://nswcurriculumreform.nesa.nsw.edu.au/home/siteAreaContent/524abec1-f0f9-4ffd-9e01-2cc89432ad5
Exploring the change across a generation: First-year Physics students’ conceptions and study approaches between 2002-2018
Get PDFIt is often not contested that students’ performance in STEM disciplines is declining. As well as the more recent results from standardized testing of younger students, it is not uncommon to hear university STEM professors anecdotally report of the failure of more recent cohorts to live up to the standard of their predecessors. However, it is rare to find studies which address the purported declining standards amongst students entering university STEM studies using the same instruments over an extended time period. This repeated cross-sectional study examines how students upon entry into university physics studies respond to an established conceptual survey on mechanics as well as two surveys probing epistemological beliefs. A total of 2448 first-year undergraduate students were surveyed at an Australian research-intensive university from 2002 to 2018. Our findings show that students' conceptions of the structure of physics knowledge and their study approaches, remain remarkably stable. In the measures of physics conceptual understanding, students in the later cohorts return significantly higher scores over the study period. We discuss the backdrop in which this study has occurred and argue that these findings offer a unique insight into similarities and differences of a narrow band of student cohorts over more than a decade
Online French Physical Society questionnaire: A way to identify students’ difficulties at the entrance at University
Get PDFFRENCH CONTEXT
In France, entry to university is determined by a national examination taken by all students in their final year at high school, the Baccalauréat (K12). Yet, its success rate (over 90%) no longer guarantees a satisfactory level of the laureates. French universities, where enrolment is (almost) free, are nevertheless legally obliged to accept all passed students. On leaving high school, other choices for students wishing to train in physics are to join either a preparatory school for engineering schools (CPGE), which is free for the most part, but is selective and includes intensive training, or a free and selective three-year professional course, or to enter university. The latest statistics show that only a small fraction of students who have followed a scientific course in high school choose to go to university (Inspection Générale - Ministry of National Education, 2022); scientific university tracks thus deal with students who are often already in difficulty and have to adapt their courses to help them succeed. Even if some universities have set up placement tests to organise support courses, there is no national system to monitor the evolution of students' levels and provide an overview.
ONLINE PHYSICAL SOCIETY OF FRANCE QUESTIONNAIRE
In this context, the French Physical Society has designed a one-hour online questionnaire (MCQ; Questionnaire de la Société Française de Physique, 2014) to help university teachers identify their students' difficulties. With four parts (basic mathematics, mechanics, waves and scientific culture) and around 100 questions, it can be completed in one hour and provides immediate feedback to students and their teachers on the answers provided. It also allows for the collection of data from all over the country. This MCQ, the content of which was chosen to comply with the high school curriculum (Ministry of National Education, 2019), consists primarily of questions on concepts, based on situations identified as likely to induce reasoning difficulties (Viennot, 1996) and is inspired by existing questionnaires (FCI, 1985 for example; Hestenes et al., 1992).
Launched in 2014, this questionnaire was taken by more than 3000 students. It provides an admittedly partial view (but the only one available to our best knowledge) on the evolution of French students' understanding of concepts by the end of high school. We will present the results obtained by both CPGE classes and university students, and their evolution following the reform of the high school curriculum and the effects of COVID-19. While first analyses confirm the expected difference in level between the two populations, they also document, for both tracks, a significant decrease over time in the understanding of several concepts.
REFERENCES
Hestenes, D., Wells, M., & Swackhammer, G. (1992). Force Concept Inventory. The Physics Teacher, 30, 141. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.2343497
Inspection Générale - Ministry of National Education (2022). Presentation at the "Adaptation of higher education pathways to baccalaureate graduates resulting from the new reform of the physics curriculum" days. Nice, 2022.
Ministry of National Education (2019). Programmes de Terminale en physique-chimie. Bulletin official n° 8, 2019 https://eduscol.education.fr/1648/programmes-et-ressources-en-physique-chimie-voie-gt [in French]
Questionnaire de la Société Française de Physique (2014). http://qcm.sfpnet.fr/
Viennot, L. (1996). Reasoning in Physics: The Part of Common Sense. Springer
