Physics topics and experiments in teaching theme studies
Titel: Physics topics and experiments in teaching theme studies. Descriptive data from Baden-Württemberg
Graduate student: Pia Altenburger, University of Education Ludwigsburg
Academic adviser: Prof. Dr. Erich Starauscheck, Institute of Science and Technology (Department Physics), University of Education Ludwigsburg
Teacher surveys, for example from Bröll et al (2007), Lengsfeld (2009), Möller (2004) and Landwehr (2002), show that a lot of primary school teachers who teach scientific and especially physics topics in theme studies often do not feel competent enough to teach these contents.
These results indicate that there is a connection between the professional knowledge of primary school teachers and the extent of the given teaching contents in science, especially in physics.
Compared with the international studies IGLU-E (1) (Prenzle et al. 2003) and TIMSS 2007 (2) (Bos et al. 2008), primary school students reach values in the upper third of international ranking for science in all competence areas covered.
These three aspects were united into one question:
Is the knowledge of the students influenced by the extent of the topics taught in physics and by the professional knowledge of the teachers?
To date no results are available. The professional knowledge of primary school teachers and the students’ knowledge of physics in grade 4 should be collected with the help of a questionnaire study. The extent of the scientific and physics contents taught in theme studies should be analysed and categorised using the grade book and the instruction materials. The interpretation of the results is implemented using a multi-level analysis.
