Modern and contemporary physics teaching: a review on recent literature

Abstract

This paper presents a review of the literature on the teaching of modern and contemporary physics performed by consulting the articles published in leading Brazilian and international journals of science education in the period 2001 to 2006. The research focused on the papers targeted to education and it resulted in a sample of 102 articles. The studies reviewed were classified into four broad categories: didactical proposals tested in classroom, bibliographical reference to teachers, survey of misconceptions, curriculum analysis. It is possible to note that, despite a significant increase on publications on the teaching of modern and contemporary physics presenting research results, most articles still refer to bibliographical reference for teachers. Although there are a considerable number of studies involving new teaching proposals, there are few studies that investigate the mechanisms involved in the process of building knowledge related to topics of modern and contemporary physics in the classroom.