Electricity and magnetism step by step and optics step by step: optional special labs in first years of pre-service teacher training
Abstract
Introductory physics courses for future physics teachers serve various, often quite "divergent" purposes. On one hand, they should present physics at university level, using mathematical tools like integrals, differential equations, tensors etc. with sufficient degree of exactness.
On the other hand, they should develop conceptual understanding, physics insight and "intuition", skills necessary for doing experiments etc. Often, the development of such conceptual understanding and necessary skills is aimed also "at university level", assuming that students know the basics from secondary schools and have some experience with at least elementary experiments.
Moreover, it is often assumed that students themselves will see the link between "secondary school physics" and "university physics". However, often this is not the case and future teachers complain that there is a large gap between physics at those two stages.
To help students reduce this gap we created two optional seminars: Electricity and magnetism step by step and Optics step by step. These seminars give students better understanding of physical concepts as well as some basic methodical comments for their future work with pupils.
Both seminars are based on the methodology of the Heureka Project. In this article we present our experience with both seminars.