7-11 July 2014
Africa/Johannesburg timezone
<a href="http://events.saip.org.za/internalPage.py?pageId=16&confId=34"><font color=#0000ff>SAIP2014 Proceedings published on 17 April 2015</font></a>

New ways of thinking about university physics teaching: A discussion of discursive representations using South African examples

10 Jul 2014, 09:00
1h
Auditorium

Auditorium

Oral Presentation Track H - Plenaries Plenary

Speaker

Prof. Cedric Linder (Uppsala University and UWC)

Level for award<br>&nbsp;(Hons, MSc, <br> &nbsp; PhD)?

N/A

Apply to be<br> considered for a student <br> &nbsp; award (Yes / No)?

No

Would you like to <br> submit a short paper <br> for the Conference <br> Proceedings (Yes / No)?

Yes

Abstract content <br> &nbsp; (Max 300 words)<br><a href="http://events.saip.org.za/getFile.py/access?resId=0&materialId=0&confId=34" target="_blank">Formatting &<br>Special chars</a>

Over the past two to three decades it has been convincingly shown that many of the learning challenges faced by physics students are rooted in coming to understand and work with the specialised forms of communication that physics uses. This communication is made up of discursive representational forms such as written and spoken language, mathematics, graphs, gestures, sketches, diagrams, pictures, schemata, and so on. From such a viewpoint, the teaching and learning of physics becomes inseparable from these representations and their intended disciplinary affordances. Thus, they aught to take on special significance in our educational practices. In the face of the recent South African Council on Higher Education and the South African Institute of Physics Review of Undergraduate Physics Education it seems relevant to ask if they do? Three recent studies that include selected South African university-physics education contexts will be used to discuss this issue.

Primary author

Prof. Cedric Linder (Uppsala University and UWC)

Presentation Materials