Physics teaching in a public school: an ethnographic case study with an epistemological bias

Authors

  • Neusa T. Massoni Instituto de Física da UFRGS Caixa Postal 15051 - campus 91501-97- Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil
  • Marco Antonio Moreira Instituto de Física da UFRGS Caixa Postal 15051 - campus 91501-97- Porto Alegre, RS, Brasil

Keywords:

teaching of physics, classroom ethnography, contemporary epistemological views.

Abstract

This paper is a classroom ethnography. Ethnography in a research strategy that attempts to comprehensively describe a culture, in this case the culture of a physics classroom in the 12th grade of a public high school in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This study is part of a larger scope study designed to investigate the contributions of contemporary views of the nature of science to the improvement of physics teaching. It is in sense that this paper assumes an epistemological perspective. The physics teacher that was observed had conceptions partially aligned to those epistemological views, however, although our initial intention was to search for relationships between her conceptions an her teaching practices we ended up with a detailed interpretative description of the classroom reality that revealed relevant aspects to the comprehension of such a culture and to the teaching and learning process in physics. This interpretative description is what we present here.

Published

2016-07-13

How to Cite

Massoni, N. T., & Moreira, M. A. (2016). Physics teaching in a public school: an ethnographic case study with an epistemological bias. Investigations in Science Education, 17(1), 147–181. Retrieved from https://ienci.if.ufrgs.br/index.php/ienci/article/view/211