Istanbul 2012
Proceedings of the World Conference on Physics Education 2012
Preface
Physics Education Research (PER) represents the most voluminous, the oldest, and the most rigorous tradition in whole science education research. On the other hand, with its 1380 research article pages, this is the most voluminous book reporting research studies of PER. Thanks to hundreds of its contributors, this book represents the state-of-the-art of PER as of 2012. This book was produced as a result of first World Conference on Physics Education (WCPE) that was held in Istanbul, Turkey during July 1-6, 2012.
Teachers, educators, and researchers, from all continents and 55 countries have attended the WCPE 2012.
During the 6 days of the conference there were 249 oral presentations, 27 workshops, 12 symposia, and around 100 poster presentations together with 5 keynote addresses.
On behalf of all participants I wish to thank the sponsors: IUPAP, ICPE, EPS, TÜBİTAK, GIREP, MPTL, Rentech, Vernier, APS, IOP for their support. We are also grateful to AAPT, AsPEN, and LaPEN for their endorsements of the conference.
Like all other PER enthusiasts, I am also looking forward to the second WCPE which is decided to take place in São Paulo, Brazil in 2016 and wish that such a proceedings book tradition continues.
Mehmet Fatih Taşar The Main Organizer of WCPE 2012
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Jyvaskylla 2011
Proceedings of the GIREP-EPEC 2011 International Conference
PHYSICS ALIVE
Preface
This book brings together the selected papers presented in the international GIREP-EPEC 2011 conference, which was held in Jyväskylä, Finland 1st-5th August 2011. Each paper was blind reviewed by members of the scientific committee. Papers were subsequently revised by authors according to reviewers’ comments. These versions have finally been reviewed by the editors to improve consistency of style and language.
Most of the contributions incorporate the theme of the conference, Physics Alive. The collection of papers emphasizes the efforts toward increasing student motivation in Physics and teaching the lively and developing field of Physics in lively manner. As an outcome of a conference of diverse topics and audience, the articles vary in objectives and methodology – and that is why they make a unique collection of interesting research questions, methods and results to improve teaching of Physics. We hope that you will find this book as a valuable resource of information and new ideas.
This book and electronic publication constitute a single product. When referring to any of the papers, whether in the book or in the online content, the reference should be: [Au- thor(s)](2012).[Paper title]. In A. Lindell, A.-L. Kähkönen, & J. Viiri (Eds.), Physics Alive. Proceedings of the GIREP-EPEC 2011 Conference, (page numbers). Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä.
Finally, we acknowledge all the authors for their contributions and the assistance of the review- ers and the International Scientific Committee:
Carl Angell, Norway; Constantinos P. Constantinou, Cyprus; Leos Dvorak, Czech Republic; Ton Ellermeijer, Netherlands; Claudia Haagen-Schuetzenhoefer, Austria; Ismo Koponen, Fin- land; Robert Lambourne, UK; Ian Lawrence, UK, Matti Leino, Finland; Jukka Maalampi, Fin- land; Leopold Mathelitsch, Austria; Juha Merikoski, Finland; Marisa Michelini, Italy; Nicos Pa- padouris, Cyprus; Wim Peeters, Belgium; Gorazd Planinsic, Slovenia; Dimitris Psillos, Greece; Lorenzo Santi, Italy; Antti Savinainen, Finland; Laurence Viennot, France.
Anssi Lindell
Chair of the GIREP-EPEC 2011 Conference Editor
Jouni Viiri Associate Editor
Anna-Leena Kähkönen Secretary of the Editorial Board
University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
June 2012
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Reims 2010
Proceedings of the GIREP-ICPE-MPTL 2010 International Conference
TEACHING AND LEARNING PHYSICS TODAY: CHALLENGES? BENEFITS?
Preface
In August 2010 the city of Reims and its university organized the international conference “Teaching and Learning Physics Today: Challenges? Benefits?” with the Groupe International de Recherche sur l’Enseigne- ment de la Physique (GIREP), the International Commission on Physics Education (ICPE) and the group on Multimedia in Physics Teaching and Learning (MPTL). These three bodies share very important goals, such as contributing to improve the teaching/learning of physics at all levels, campaigning for the exchange of infor- mation covering all aspects of physics education, supporting innovation in teacher education methods in order to take advantage of the progress of the research in physics as well as in physics education.
The conference was supported and endorsed by International Union on Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP), European Physical Society (EPS), the University of Paris Diderot Paris 7 and its Laboratoire de Didactique André Revuz (LDAR), the Société Française de Physique, the French Union des Professeurs de Physique et de Chimie (UdPPC) and the laboratory GRESPI.
The organizers of the conference were fortunate to benefit from the combined experiences of over three hundred participants from all over the world, representing researchers in various fields of physics, physics teachers of all levels and PHD students from fifty countries. The challenges in teaching and learning physics today, referred to in the title of the conference, were described, compared and carefully examined. The subject of benefits of teaching and learning physics also produced 230 contributions of great interest. A broad range of pioneering proposals and physics education research originated suggestions aimed at helping teachers in improving their work by developing scientific reasoning using simple experiments, exploring existing (free or easily available) multimedia resources, as well as taking advantage of fascination of science and using history of science as a means of including physics in general human achievement.
The richness of contributions presented and the help of the University of Udine allowed GIREP to produce a selected paper book containing the 10% of the best presented contributions. Long and detailed was the peer review process to produce this book. The interest and the quality of the other contributions presented in the Conference convinced GIREP to produce this selected paper Conference Proceedings. This web proceeding e-book contains paper submitted to the process of peer review and accepted by two anonymous referees.
The chapter 1-Background aspects, 2-Special aspects and 4-Thematic analysis have the same contents of the book, containing respectively the plenary talks, the contributions to the Symposia and the contributions pro- duced by Workshops held in the Reims Conference. Chapter 3 on “Topical aspects” contains the selected papers of the oral contributions presented in seven times seven parallel oral presentations sessions and it is organized in the following sub-topics: History and Nature of Science, University teaching / learning propos- al, Modern and contemporary physics, Experiment proposals, New teaching/learning methods and Inquiry Based Learning, Multimedia in teaching/learning, Learning out of school, Teacher Education. The last chapter 5-Complementary aspects contains the EPS awarded poster and some very appreciated poster contributions.
We thank the anonymous peer reviewers, whose important help may not always be evident, but is fundamental.
It goes without saying that we are very grateful to all the participants for stimulating discussions, important advice, constructive criticism and patient encouragement.
We hope that this web proceedings book will be useful to those involved in physics education research, as well as those who practice the teaching of physics every day.
Wanda Kaminski and Marisa Michelini
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