Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462

DOI 10.1007/s11165-007-9057-6

Views about Physics held by Physics Teachers

with Differing Approaches to Teaching Physics

Pamela Mulhall & Richard Gunstone

Published online: 5 September 2007

# Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2007

Abstract Physics teachers’ approaches to teaching physics are generally considered to be

linked to their views about physics. In this qualitative study, the views about physics held
by a group of physics teachers whose teaching practice was traditional were explored and
compared with the views held by physics teachers who used conceptual change approaches.
A particular focus of the study was teachers’ views about the role of mathematics in
physics. The findings suggest the traditional teachers saw physics as discovered, close
approximations of reality while the conceptual change teachers’ views about physics ranged
from a social constructivist perspective to more realist views. However, most teachers did
not appear to have given much thought to the nature of physics or physics knowledge, nor
to the role of mathematics in physics.

Keywords Physics teachers . Views about physics . Views about teaching physics .
Mathematics in physics

Physics teachers have a tacit understanding, strongly shared by the students, that the
important aspects of physics have to do with manipulation of mathematical symbols
(de Souza Barros and Elia 1998, para. III(ii)).
Physics has traditionally been regarded as one of the hard sciences, being seen to be,
among other things, abstruse, objective and highly mathematical. Indeed its image is such
that it is held in an almost reverent esteem by the public in general and by physicists in
particular (Ford 1989).
Part of the mystique of physics lies in its attempts to explain the behaviour of things
from the very large to the very small, and its tackling of the ‘big’ questions (How did the
universe begin? What keeps it going?). In fact, the science writer and commentator,

P. Mulhall (*) : R. Gunstone

Faculty of Education, Monash University, Building 6, Clayton 3800, Victoria, Australia
e-mail: pam.mulhall@education.monash.edu.au
436 Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462

Margaret Wertheim (1997), argues that physics has taken on the role of religion in
determining our world view of how the universe works. Her analogy of physics as religion
includes physicists as high priests and interpreters of ‘the Truth’ (or what others have called
the ‘Book of Nature’). The task of the physicist is to ‘discover’ through observations the
mathematical relationships that are assumed to govern all behaviour:
[A] major psychological force behind the evolution of physics has been the a priori
belief that the structure of the natural world is determined by a set of transcendent
mathematical relations. (p. xv)
The respected physicist and author of popular science books, Paul Davies (1991), agrees:
[T]he belief that mathematical laws of some sort underpin the operation of the
physical world is now a central tenet of the scientific faith. (p. 47)
[T]he laws have taken on the status formerly reserved for God and are imbued with
the same mystical properties: They are universal, eternal, absolute, transcendent,
omnipotent .... (p. 48)
That the laws of physics are expressed in mathematical form further adds to its
mystique. Such is the importance of mathematics in representing physics relationships
that it is often referred to as the ‘language of physics’. This, of course, implies that to be
able to speak the language of physics, and hence to understand its ideas, one must be
knowledgeable about, and good at, mathematics. Certainly many physics text books,
particularly at the tertiary level, are incomprehensible without a suitable background in
mathematics.
Another consequence of the mathematical form of these laws is that they can be tested
using measurements. This adds a sense that physics is what Chalmers (1982) calls “reliable
knowledge” in which there is no room for “personal opinion or preferences and speculative
imaginings” (p. 1). This view is reflected in the statement made by a famous physicist,
William Thomson (later raised to the peerage as Lord Kelvin), that is quoted in a popular
undergraduate physics textbook of the 1960s to 1980s:
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in
numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers,
your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of
knowledge but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of Science,
whatever the matter may be. (Halliday and Resnick 1966, p. 1)
At the heart of the research reported in this paper is the question of whether, and how,
these essentially philosophical ideas about physics impact on physics teachers’ thinking.
Arguably, physics teachers who hold beliefs of the kind outlined above will, as true
disciples of physics (to use the Wertheim analogy), attach more importance in their teaching
to the mathematical representation of physics ideas than to other ways of representing them,
for this captures the essence of what physics is about, viz. providing an objective, rigorous
and proven description of an external world. Unfortunately, as Linder (1992) cogently
argues, teaching which portrays physics this way is likely to be counter productive in terms
of developing students’ understanding, for it encourages them to rote-learn; to believe that
being able to solve physics problems demonstrates conceptual understanding; and to take
an unreflective approach to learning about physics ideas.
Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462 437

The study sought to better understand why physics teaching is as it is, and to help those
who work in pre- and in-service physics teacher education programs. The research was part
of a larger qualitative study that explored the views about physics and learning and teaching
physics amongst a group of physics teachers whose teaching approaches were traditional
and compared them with the views of a group of teachers who used conceptual change
teaching approaches (Mulhall 2005). In this paper, we focus on the views about physics
held by the two groups of teachers, who all taught upper secondary school physics. In the
following discussion, we provide theoretical perspectives of traditional and conceptual
change approaches to teaching physics, and discuss relevant literature concerning research
on teachers’ views in general and on physics teachers’ views in particular. We then explain
the research context, the aims of the study and method used, and summarise the results.
Finally we discuss the implications of the findings.

Traditional Approaches to Teaching Physics

It appears to be well accepted that traditional physics teaching emphasises facts, definitions
of physical concepts and use of formulas to solve physics problems (Linder 1992; Osborne
1990; Wildy and Wallace 1995). As Osborne (1990) notes, much of this teaching seems to
assume that students develop an understanding of the concepts of physics through
successfully completing numerical problems and by doing practical work (pp. 191–193). In
the light of the discussion earlier, it would seem that traditional physics teaching is based on
the view that learning physics is unproblematic because the ideas of physics are
unproblematic in that they are discovered, observable truths which are unambiguously
and accurately represented through mathematics. The following description is particularly
apt:
[This teaching] attempts to transmit to learners concepts which are precise and
unambiguous, using language capable of transferring ideas from expert to novice
(teacher to student) with precision. (Carr et al. 1994, p. 147, emphasis in original)
As an advance organiser, we note that our argument is not that facts, definitions and
formulas are unimportant in physics. Rather, our argument is that these represent the
endpoints of considerable intellectual efforts by physicists to understand phenomena. The
traditional teaching approach of using these as beginning points for learning not only fails
to acknowledge the complex and discursive nature of physics ideas, but also, as we
elaborate below, is unhelpful for promoting understanding.

Conceptual Change Teaching

The plethora of research over the past 25 years which has revealed that many students’
understandings of science ideas are at odds with scientists’ views (Osborne and Freyberg
1985; Pfundt and Duit 1994) suggests that traditional science teaching approaches are
inadequate in terms of developing student conceptual understanding. Ways of improving
students’ understandings that have been suggested by researchers are usually qualitative
and involve student discussion (Hewson et al. 1998; McKittrick et al. 1999; Scott and
438 Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462

Driver 1998). Generally these approaches involve recognising that students construct their
own understandings, and that when they enter the classroom, students already have
understandings about phenomena which they have developed to explain their everyday
experiences. From this perspective, learning occurs when new constructions are made and it
is the role of the teacher to try to influence these so they are consistent with scientific
thinking. Thus learning is seen as a process of ‘conceptual change’, although it is now
recognised that (1) learning tends to be more gradual than this terms suggests, and that (2)
‘conceptual addition’ is probably a better term because it acknowledges that learning is
only rarely a sharp exchange of one set of meanings for another, and is more often an
accretion of information and instances that the learner uses to sort out contexts in which
it is profitable to use one form of explanation or another. (Fensham et al. 1994, p. 6)

Just as it was argued that traditional physics teaching suggests a particular view of
physics, so too researchers have argued that conceptual change teaching approaches in
science (and, by implication, physics) imply a particular view of science (and hence
physics). Driver et al. (1994) make the point that scientific knowledge is essentially
“symbolic” (p. 5) and “socially constructed and validated” (p. 6). They note that science
ideas do not develop in a “nonproblematic way from observations” or by “reading the
‘book of nature’” (p. 6). Instead, these scholars argue that “the objects of science are not the
phenomena of nature” (p. 5) but are “constructs that have been invented and imposed on
phenomena in attempts to interpret and explain them, often as results of considerable
intellectual struggles” (p. 6). However, once accepted by the scientific community, these
constructions are incorporated into the way scientists think about, and view, the world,
eventually becoming part of the public knowledge of science. Crucially, it is unrealistic to
think that any individual would independently develop these same constructions. As Driver
et al. (1994) put it:
[T]he symbolic world of science is now populated with entities such as atoms, ...
fields and fluxes, ...; it is organized by ideas such as evolution and encompasses
procedures of measurement and experiment. ... [Such entities, ideas and procedures]
are unlikely to be discovered by individuals through their own observations of the
natural world. (p. 6)

Consistent with the above view of scientific knowledge as being socially constructed and
validated, Driver et al. (1994) consider That:
learning science involves being initiated into scientific ways of knowing .... [It]
involves being initiated into the ideas and practices of the scientific community and
making these ideas and practices meaningful at an individual level. (p. 6)

Accordingly, the implication for science teachers is that their role is to “mediate” this
learning and help learners to make “personal sense” of science ideas and “the ways in
which knowledge claims are generated and validated” (Driver et al. 1994, p. 6).
Underpinning this role is, as noted above, the view that it is unlikely that a learner will
discover the ideas of science through personal observation because the (disciplinary)
knowledge of science is socially negotiated and validated and its ideas problematic, a
position with which there appears to be consensus among other academics (e.g. Hewson et
al. 1998; Hodson 1998; Tobin and Tippins 1993).
Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462 439

Applying these ideas to physics classrooms leads to the position that the role of teachers
is to introduce students to the physics ‘way of knowing’, including of course its definitions
and formulas. However, consistent with our argument earlier, definitions and formulas in
these forms of physics classrooms represent an endpoint of teaching, and consideration of
how to best enable students to reach this endpoint (as opposed to just asserting the
endpoint) is crucial. Teacher facilitated discussion in which students consider their own and
physics ideas about phenomena plays a central role in students’ meaning making and helps
them understand why physicists hold these ideas (Leach and Scott 1999; Scott and Driver
1998). In comparison to the traditional teaching approach of assuming that understanding of
formulas develops as students solve problems, the social constructivist position is that
problem solving should only be introduced after such understandings have been developed.
As the fundamental focus of this paper is teachers’ views about physics, research that
others have conducted in this area is now discussed, beginning with a brief consideration of
some common issues relating to researching teachers’ views.

Researching Teachers’ Views

In his review of general research into teachers’ beliefs, Pajares (1992) notes That
[Beliefs] travel in disguise and often under alias – attitudes, values, ... opinions, ...
perceptions, conceptions, ... implicit theories, explicit theories, ... perspectives ...
(p. 309)
(‘Views’, the expression used in this paper, easily fits into this list.)
Pajares (1992) also asserts that comments, intentions and behaviours must all be taken
into account when making inferences about beliefs (p. 316). In this study, such an approach
was neither practical nor appropriate given the nature of the research questions, listed
below. Instead, physics teachers’ views were inferred from their responses in extended
interviews, a method advocated by Kagan (1990) as being one of the better approaches for
exploring teachers’ views because teachers may be unaware of the beliefs they hold, or
unable or reluctant to express them, and have beliefs that are contextually dependent
(p. 420). Observations of classrooms were used to classify teachers’ teaching approach.
These classroom observations also provided a check that the teachers’ practices were not
inconsistent with their interview responses, but their capacity to provide insight into
teachers’ views was limited because only a few lessons were able to be observed. In
addition, research into teachers’ views about the ‘nature of science’, defined as “the values
and assumptions inherent to the development of scientific knowledge” (Lederman and
Zeidler 1987, p. 721), has generally struggled to find clear links between teachers’ views
and their classroom practice (Lederman 1992; Lederman et al. 1998).

Teachers’ Views About Science

A search of the literature suggests that there has been a greater abundance of research into
teachers’ beliefs about science than about physics, and that the general view is that
traditional teaching in both science and the science disciplines is linked to a belief that
scientific knowledge is discovered and proven knowledge (e.g. Linder 1992; Prawat 1989,
1992; Tobin 1998; Tobin et al. 1994). Many research reports support these conclusions. For
440 Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462

example, an ethnographic study by Gallagher and his students found that a group of science
teachers tended to think of scientific knowledge as objective, being based on observations
and experiments; and that they focused on the so-called ‘scientific method’1 and on science
content knowledge in their teaching, but did little to help promote student understanding
(Gallagher 1991, pp. 124–127). In another ethnographic study, Duschl and Wright (1989)
obtained similar results. The science teachers studied had “logical positivistic” views about
science, and considered that ‘the scientific method’ was the approach used in science (pp.
490–492). These teachers emphasised scientific propositional knowledge and processes,
and focused on students’ acquisition of content knowledge in high ability classes and on
developing students’ basic skills such as reading and writing in low ability classes (pp.
482–486). A case study of biology teachers by Benson (1989) found they considered that
“all aspects studied in science exist in the real world” and that truth is determined by testing
hypotheses using ‘the scientific method’ (p. 339). They tended to use a lecture style
teaching approach and focused on presenting detailed information for students to learn.
Research amongst pre-service science teachers has produced similar findings. Aguirre et
al. (1990) explored the views of students entering a secondary science teacher education
program using a questionnaire with open-ended questions and concluded that holding a
“‘discovery’ view of science” may dispose student teachers towards a “‘knowledge intake’
view of learning” and a transmissive approach to teaching (p. 389). Hewson and colleagues
also explored pre-service biology teachers’ views during a teacher education program
(Hewson et al. 1999a, b) but employed a more extensive range of qualitative investigations,
including interviews about conceptions of science teaching (Hewson and Hewson 1989).
They found that at the time of entering the program, these prospective teachers had
“positivist” views of science knowledge and transmissive teaching views (Hewson et al.
1999b, p. 379), with most believing that “true knowledge exists, that it is independent of
individuals, and that it can be transmitted or passed on to another person by using good
explanations and demonstrations of scientific principles” (p. 378).
Some studies have compared the beliefs of different groups of teachers. Tsai (2002)
categorised a group (N=37) of science teachers’ beliefs about teaching science, learning
science and the nature of science as “traditional”, “process” or “constructivist” (p. 773). The
study found that about 40% of teachers held congruent traditional beliefs about teaching,
learning and science, about 10% held congruent process beliefs and about 5% held
congruent constructivist beliefs (p. 777). In a later study of four science teachers, Tsai
(2007) found strong links between their science epistemological views, teaching beliefs,
and instructional practices. Hashweh (1996) compared the teaching practices of two groups
of science teachers with different epistemological views, which he labelled as “construc-
tivist” and “empiricist”. While he concluded that teachers’ epistemological beliefs influence
their teaching, the study itself did not include observations of teachers’ actual practices but
instead used self reports by teachers about their practices.
Scholars have suggested varying reasons for teachers’ beliefs about science. Pomeroy
(1993) found in her survey exploring beliefs about science and science education that
secondary science teachers appeared to subscribe more strongly than elementary teachers to
a traditional view of science that “the only valid way of gaining scientific knowledge [is]

1
In this paper, references to the stereo-typical scientific method commonly portrayed in textbooks (see for
example McComas 1998, p. 57), are denoted by using inverted commas, e.g. the ‘scientific method’
Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462 441

through the application of inductive methods based upon observation and controlled
experimentation” (p. 262). She suggested these differences occurred because secondary
teachers, unlike elementary teachers, generally have a formal science training and have
been initiated “into the norms of the scientific community”, whose members generally
espouse traditional views about science (p. 269). On the other hand, Brickhouse (1989)
suggested that secondary science teachers’ beliefs may be influenced by years of exposure
to the idealised models of science presented by text books, and also by working for
lengthy periods in schools that value teaching factual knowledge. Nott and Wellington
(1996) argued that science teachers’ “(k)nowledge of the nature of science will be brought
to the classroom and developed through classroom experience” (p. 286, emphasis in
original) for they constantly face issues related to the nature of science, such as “practicals
going wrong” and ethical problems related to the development of scientific knowledge
(p. 286).
Abd-El-Khalick and Lederman (2000a) reviewed studies of (generally unsuccessful)
attempts to develop prospective and in-service teachers’ conceptions of the nature of
science. They concluded that such approaches are more likely to succeed when they include
explicit teaching about the nature of science and provide opportunities for teachers to reflect
on aspects of the nature of science. In addition, Schwartz and Lederman’s (2002) study of two
beginning teachers as they learned about the nature of science suggested that progression in
their understanding about the nature of science was linked to the strength of their subject
matter knowledge. Abd-El-Khalick (2005) found a philosophy of science course to be
relatively more effective than a science methods course when both used an explicit,
reflective approach to teaching about the nature of science. Explicit, reflective approaches to
teaching about the nature of science that involved teachers participating in scientific inquiry
have also been successful (Akerson and Hanuscin 2007; Bencze and Elshof 2003). However,
a study of the effect of history of science courses on prospective teachers’ views about
science failed to detect any significant influence (Abd-El-Khalick and Lederman 2000b).

Comment

An important issue that generally seems to be unacknowledged in much of the research into
teachers’ views about science is that ‘science’ comprises a diversity of disciplines. Indeed,
Chalmers (1982) considers that it is “misleading” to speak of ‘science’ as though it is “a
single category” (p. 166), a view reflected by Lederman (1992) who observes that
conceptions of science differ between the scientific disciplines, noting the differences
between the disciplines, about, for example, what constitutes an acceptable causal
explanation (p. 352). For example, teleological explanations are generally not acceptable
in physics because they are seen to anthropomorphise physical objects; however, they are
quite common in biology, possibly because of Darwinian ideas about natural selection
(Ruse 1988).
There are other differences between the various science disciplines. Physics has
relatively few theories, and these are highly interconnected with strong predictive power;
biology, on the other hand, has many theories, but the relationship between these is
relatively less well developed and they generally lack predictive capacity (Mayr 1988;
Rosenberg 1985). Whereas for the physicist “[t]he watch words ... are logicality and
simplicity” and the ultimate goal is to understand the universe using smallest number of
442 Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462

physical laws possible (Stuewer 1997, Section on ‘The physicist’s point of view’, para. 5),
the biologist deals with living organisms that are inherently complex, and evolution and the
factors involved in the emergence of life are such that generalisations often need to be
provisional (Keller 2007). In chemistry, chemical behaviours are regarded as too complex
to reduce to a few physical laws (e.g. Baird et al. 2006). A fundamental difference from the
perspective of this study is the extent to which mathematics is used in the various science
disciplines, for common perceptions arise that are associated with this difference, as
summed up by Bronowski and Mazlish (1960):

Our confidence in any science is roughly proportional to the amount of mathematics it

employs ....We feel that physics is truly a science, but that there somehow clings to
chemistry the less formal odor (and odium) of the cook book. And as we proceed to
biology ... we know that we are fast slipping down a slope away from science. (p. 218)
It seems that research in science education has generally not explored specific features of
the various science disciplines and acknowledged differences between them. An exception
is a study by Tsai (2006) who found that Taiwanese students believe that biological
knowledge is more tentative than physics knowledge. In addition, a study by Koulaidis and
Ogborn (1989) found science teachers from different disciplines had different views about
the nature of science and recommended further research into teachers’ views about the
various science disciplines, which the present study aims to do.

Physics Teachers’ Views About Physics

A study by Veal (1999) provides some insight into the possible physics related views of
physics teachers. His qualitative investigation of the development of pedagogical content
knowledge (PCK) in two secondary chemistry and two secondary physics pre-service
teachers found that this development was influenced by beliefs about their subject
discipline. The pre-service physics teachers’ practice was influenced by beliefs that physics
is “a mathematically oriented discipline”, is seen as hard by students, and uses a
“macroscopic perspective” when explaining phenomena (pp. 26–30). The chemistry pre-
service teachers’ practice was influenced by different beliefs related to chemistry.
Interestingly, in the model for PCK development proposed by Veal (1999), beliefs and
PCK are “inextricably intertwined”, with beliefs informing the classroom practice of pre-
service teachers and this practice informing beliefs (p. 32).
An interpretive study of two physics teachers concluded they held “positivistic” views
about the nature of science despite their long experience with a high school physics course
which promoted “a view of science as ‘invented’ or ‘constructed’” (Abu-Sneineh, cited in
Gallagher 1991, pp. 126–127). Interestingly, a specifically physics related view was noted
in one of these teachers who said, “Physics, for the greatest part is very objective” (Abu-
Sneineh, cited in Gallagher 1991, p. 127).
Finally, Tobin et al. (1997) describe the teaching practices of a beginning physics teacher
who espoused a constructivist view of learning but tended to focus on applying formulas,
and did little to promote the development of student understanding of the associated
concepts. There was a sense of “physics as being elusive and beyond the grasp of everyday
common sense” (p. 505), and a willingness on the part of both students and teacher to
accept explanations as being correct or incorrect on the basis of the authority of physics as a
discipline (pp. 502–503).
Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462 443

The Context of the Research

The study links with a separate 3 year research project, the Understanding Physics Project
(UPP)2 which explored the consequences for student learning of teaching that focused on
developing student conceptual understanding where ten volunteer secondary school physics
teachers taught an externally prescribed 2 year physics course (i.e. at Years 11 and 12) that
involved high stakes, externally set examinations during the second year. These teachers’
views about physics, and about learning and teaching physics were explored during the
conduct of the project, which centred on the teaching of a unit of work at the Year 11 level
in which the content areas were motion and DC electricity. Among these teachers, there was
a group of five whose practice was consistent with the approaches of conceptual change
teaching (hereafter called ‘the Conceptual teachers’). Later, these views were explored
amongst a group of five teachers whose teaching is best described as traditional (hereafter
called ‘the Traditional teachers’). These Traditional teachers were invited to participate in
this study, and were chosen partly on the basis of convenience, and partly because we had
reason to believe (e.g. through conversations in physics teaching circles), that their teaching
practices were traditional, an assumption that was later verified as we discuss below.
The Conceptual teachers had views about learning physics that were quite different to
those of the Traditional teachers (Mulhall 2005). The Conceptual teachers considered
students construct understandings in terms of their personal frameworks, and that physics
ideas are problematic for learners for this reason. They saw physics learning as involving
cognitive engagement with, and discussion about, physics concepts. The Traditional
teachers saw physics learning as the outcome of doing certain activities (e.g. solving
problems), and considered that physics is hard because most learners do not have the
special attributes or skills needed to learn physics. As noted earlier, in this paper we focus
on the views about physics in these two groups of teachers.

Research Questions

The questions guiding the research were as follows.

For both groups of physics teachers:
1. What are teachers’ perceptions of what physics is?
2. What are teachers’ perceptions of the place of mathematics in physics?
3. (a) What are teachers’ perceptions of the way/s in which the body of physics
knowledge is established?
(b) What are teachers’ perceptions of the difficulty with which physics concepts have
been developed?

The Research Approach

Qualitative methods have a greater capacity than quantitative approaches for providing insights
into teachers’ views (Kagan 1990; Lederman 1992). Hence the approach used was qualitative,

2
Funded by the Australian Research Council; the chief investigator was the second author.
444 Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462

the views about physics, and learning and teaching physics of all teachers being explored
through extensive semi-structured interviews as discussed earlier, and their membership of the
Conceptual and Traditional Groups being determined through observations of their teaching.
The criteria for classifying a teacher’s practice were developed during UPP. The fundamental
approach taken for this classification was that for a teacher to be considered as being a
Conceptual or a Traditional teacher, that teacher’s practice needed to demonstrate clearly that
he/she belonged in the relevant group. Any teacher whose practice did not clearly indicate that
he/she clearly belonged in either of these groups was not included in the study. Conceptual
teachers were those who were observed, when teaching, to use approaches in which:
& they encouraged students to make their reasoning of a situation explicit
& they encouraged students to reason through conceptual conflicts, often with the aid
of peer input rather than teacher input, and to compare different ideas and decide
which of a range of explanations was ‘best’
& there was less teacher talk and more student talk, unlike in traditional classrooms
where the reverse is the case, and,
& the teacher’s role was to ask questions to promote student engagement with ideas,
rather than give answers and information.

Traditional teachers were those who, when teaching, were observed to focus on problem
solving and explanations using algorithms with little or no consideration of development of
students’ understanding of concepts, beyond that provided by ‘cook-book’ style laboratory
work. Central to this classification was the role of questions: Traditional teachers focused
on seeking correct answers from students or providing these themselves.
The Conceptual teachers were observed during UPP at least twice while they taught
physics to Year 11, the lessons ranging in length from 45 to 90 min. The observers were
either of two research assistants, one of whom was the first author, who made notes in situ
to describe what the teacher said and did during the lesson, and how students responded,
and later generated a teaching profile that summarised the ways in which the teacher
concerned did or did not support student understanding. These profiles were used by the
UPP research team of four highly experienced physics education researchers (all former
high school physics teachers), including both authors, to decide which teachers were
‘Conceptual’. As indicated earlier, of the ten teachers who took part in UPP, five (5) were
considered to be ‘Conceptual’.
Similarly, the five Traditional teachers were observed twice during lessons ranging from
45–90 min by the first author. Again, teaching profiles of each teacher were prepared and
used to determine whether or not he belonged to the Traditional Group, this time by the first
and second authors, both members of the original UPP team. All teachers in the original
group of five were considered to be Traditional. Thus both Conceptual and Traditional
Groups contained five (5) teachers, with the former group comprising three females and
two males and the latter comprising all males. (Given that the very large majority of physics
teachers in the context of this research are male, this is not in any way remarkable.)
Background information about the teachers in both groups is given in Table 1. Pseudonyms
are used for all the teachers in this study.
The semi-structured interviews were complex and wide-ranging in design, and included
questions about the interviewee’s perceptions of the nature of physics and of the purposes
of experimentation and its relationship with the generation of physics knowledge; about the
Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462 445

Table 1 Background information about conceptual and traditional teachers

Teacher (C, conceptual; School type Physics taught Other teaching areas
T, traditional)

Heather (C) Private girls Year 11 and 12 Mathematics (year 7–12)

General science (year 7–10)
Caitlin (C) Private girls Year 11 and 12 Chemistry (year 11 and 12)
Mathematics (year 7–10)
General science (year 7–10)
Charles (C) Government Year 11 and 12 Mathematics (year 7–10)
co-educational General science (year 7–10)
Robert (C) Private Year 11 Biology (year 11)
co-educational Mathematics (year 7–10)
General science (year 7–10)
Dorothy (C) Private girls Year 11 Chemistry (year 11 and 12)
Mathematics (year 7–10)
General science (year 7–10)
Ross (T) Private Year 11 and 12 Mathematics (year 7–12)
co-educational General science (year 7–10)
Ryan (T) Private Year 11 and 12 Mathematics (year 7–12)
co-educational General science (year 7–10)
Joe (T) Academic boys Year 11 and 12 Information technology (year 11 and 12)
Mathematics (year 11–12)
Chemistry (year 11 and 12)
General science (year 7–10)
Pat (T) Academic boys Year 11 and 12 Mathematics (year 7–10)
General science (year 7–10)
Chad (T) Government Year 11 and 12 Mathematics (year 7–12)
co-educational General science (year 7–10)

role of mathematics in physics; about why the interviewee was a physics teacher rather than
a teacher of another subject; about the interviewee’s perception of which content areas of
physics were more difficult to teach and which were easier; about teaching strategies valued
by the interviewee, and why; and about the interviewee’s perceptions of student mis-/
understandings as revealed in some quotes from students, in order to explore the nature of
the interviewee’s conceptual understanding. Examples of questions that each interviewee
was asked are provided in Appendix 1.
All interviews were audio-taped. Two were fully transcribed. An examination of these
transcripts suggested that for the purposes of this research, summaries of each interviewee’s
responses to interview questions that included important/interesting interviewee quotes
would suffice, so this was the approach taken with the rest of the interviews. Each summary
or transcription was prepared by the research assistant who conducted the relevant interview.
The analysis for this study evolved through multiple readings of the data records and
discussions between the two authors. The initial analysis was conducted by the first author,
the second author checked for confirming or disconfirming evidence in the data, and
differences were discussed until consensus was reached. Two forms of analysis of teachers’
views were undertaken, each with different purposes. The first form of analysis focused on
446 Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462

understanding the detail and nature of each individual teacher’s views about physics and
learning and teaching physics, and the links between them, while the second form focused
on understanding the commonalities and differences of views of teachers within a group
and between groups: only this second form of analysis is used in this paper, and is now
briefly discussed.
In the second form of analysis, comments from all the teacher interviews that pertained
to views about physics, learning physics, and teaching physics were identified through
multiple readings of interview summaries or transcripts. A list was generated of all these
aspects of teachers’ thinking, and the names of the relevant teachers; this included a crude
‘score’ out of 2 based on the extent to which teachers successfully identified student mis-/
understandings in one of the questions. It is important to recognise that this list was not
intended to be a definitive representation of teachers’ views; instead its purpose was to
enable comparisons between teachers and between the two teacher groups. In some cases, a
particular teacher’s belief was implied rather than stated explicitly, and, where this
occurred, decisions about whether a teacher held a particular view were based on that
teacher’s overall interview responses. In addition, while each of the various aspects of
teachers’ thinking were categorised as Views about physics, Views about learning physics or
Views about teaching physics, we acknowledge that some aspects of teachers’ thinking
could have been listed under more than one heading.
This list was used to generate a second list for each group that highlighted the most
commonly held views by those teachers within the group; for a given group, the ‘most
commonly held’ views were regarded as being those that appeared to be held by at least
four teachers within the group.
The second list was used to construct a composite of the most common views of each
group. This composite was treated as representative of the views of a ‘typical’ member of
that group, where ‘typical’ is qualified to acknowledge that no single teacher actually had
these views: rather, the ‘typical’ Conceptual/Traditional teacher is a construction which
facilitates identification of the beliefs that best characterise the group of Conceptual/
Traditional teachers.

The Trustworthiness of the Research

A number of checks contributed to the validity and reliability of the data:

1. Where appropriate, the summaries/transcripts were annotated to capture as much as
possible the general nature of the interviewee’s responses, e.g. pauses before
answering, apparent confidence or lack of confidence, etc.
2. The interview questions were examined to ensure that they concerned issues relevant to
the aims of the physics course being taught by the physics teachers.
3. An inspection of the interview questions showed that each had the capacity to provide
data for at least one research question.
4. Some triangulation of data was possible because data for each research question was
provided by more than one interview question.
5. The practice of having a second researcher check the initial analysis for discrepancies
helped to counter the effect of researcher bias.
6. An audit trail was maintained.
7. While the classroom observations were not used to provide information about teachers’
views, they were not inconsistent with the data from the interviews.
Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462 447

The Interviews

A portion of the list of the most common views of the teachers in the Traditional group –
that pertaining to Views about physics – is provided in Appendix 2 as an example of this
form of data. It should be noted that where an idea, belief or insight is shown in bulleted
point form, the original list contained more than one variant on this idea. As just discussed,
the lists of the most common views of the Traditional and Conceptual groups respectively
were used to construct the views of a ‘typical’ teacher within each group, whose views are
now presented. The Traditional teacher is referred to as ‘he’ as all members of this group
were male. The views of the typical teacher are written in the present tense to give a sense
of immediacy to the discussion.

The Views of the Typical Traditional Teacher

The typical Traditional teacher considers that physics is a science concerned with
explaining everything in the real world, and that its ideas are based on experimentation.
Because of inadequacies in observations, these ideas are not exact descriptions of reality but
further research will enable these ideas to get closer to the truth. That is, he thinks that
knowledge about the world is ‘out there’ to be discovered and that physics knowledge is
discovered knowledge.
He does not see the ideas of physics as problematic, this conclusion being supported by
his view that physics research follows the ‘scientific method’ and the absence of any
comments that suggest he thinks there may be alternative ways of viewing the world.
Indeed, arguably, his view that one can see physics everywhere indicates that he does not
see observation as theory dependent, but considers that the ideas of physics are essentially
revealed in nature.
He considers that physics is mathematical and abstract. He appears to see physics as
superior to other disciplines and/or sciences.

The Views of the Typical Conceptual Teacher

The typical Conceptual teacher thinks of physics as a science, and as being concerned with
finding useful models to explain the real world. He/she considers all models have their
limitations and, in principle, it is possible that other models or ways of thinking might
explain the world as well as, or better than, those currently used in physics. However, he/
she does not think ‘anything goes’ in physics, seeing the following as being important
aspects of physics models:
& Models are developed through observation of, and thinking about, physical
phenomena.
& Currently accepted models have been subjected to critical review by the scientific
community.
& Models which are accepted have been tested in a range of ways, often over a long
period of time, through their ability to satisfactorily explain phenomena and to
predict behaviours that have subsequently been verified. Indeed the explanatory
and predictive capacities of physics distinguish it from the other main sciences.
He/she considers that the mathematics in physics functions as a language used to express
physics ideas.
448 Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462

Discussion

The views of the typical Conceptual and Traditional teachers, presented above, provide a
means of comparing the views of the Conceptual and Traditional groups of teachers. In the
following discussion, these views are considered in terms of the research questions that
guided this study, and examples of comments from individual teachers are given.

What are Teachers’ Perceptions of What Physics is?

Both the typical Conceptual and Traditional teachers thought of physics as providing
explanations and/or ideas about phenomena in the real world. Perhaps not surprisingly, this
aspect of physics as being concerned with everything around us tended to be something that
all the teachers emphasised when asked how they would explain what physics is. Examples
of responses from both teachers’ groups are given below:
C3: I usually say [to Year 10 students who haven’t done much physics] ..., “[I]t’s
explaining how things around you work and, why things happen the way they do, for
example, why do you get a rainbow? It’s physics explaining why those sort of things
happen ... or don’t happen ...” and that’s probably what I’d say to a parent .... (CI1 6)
(Caitlin)
T4: Um, I’d just say, “It’s the science of everything. It’s concerned with everything in
the universe” and er, and just give a few examples whether it’s er, you know, involved
in engineering or it’s concerned with astronomy or, um, you name it, it’s about
everything, ah, which is not being particularly helpful but, ah, ah. (Slight pause.) I
guess the underlying reasons why the whole universe operates, but I would just say ...
it has to do with ... optics, electricity, forces, motion, astronomy ... they’re all physics,
so. (Small laugh.) (TI 1) (Chad)
However, the way the typical Conceptual and Traditional teachers thought about the
explanations/ideas of physics seemed to differ. The typical Conceptual teacher’s
thinking appeared framed by how well these explanations/ideas help us understand
phenomena:
C: Um, I think [the questions physicists explore come] from just, I s’pose, wanting to
explain what’s around us and also like coming from even having read something and
analysing, thinking about it, and, you know, does that make sense or maybe it should
be this and so looking at things that have been done, looking at things that haven’t
been done and, you know, searching for an answer to it or searching to qualify it, or
even quantify I suppose. (CI3a 5) (Heather)
C: But I think, um, I think at least – or my thing is – that it is just a fabric to hang
things on or, um, that, um, it’s a best model, I suppose, for physical phenomena. But I
think in physics, um, particularly, whether it’s fact or not – we teach it as fact unless
questioned closely – but no, it’s not, I don’t believe and I don’t believe that a lot of the

3
C denotes a comment from a Conceptual teacher, while T denotes one from a Traditional teacher.
4
This is an interview code.
Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462 449

stuff you really can prove at all. It’s just the best explanation until somebody comes
along with another one .... (CI4) (Dorothy)

On the other hand, the typical Traditional teacher’s thinking seemed framed by
perceptions of the truth value of these explanations/ideas:
T: Some of the ideas [about light and matter] are a bit confronting. But when
[students] realise that it’s reality – that we have electron microscopes, for example,
that are based on this, this, um, set of ideas, then they accept it and they can move
with it .... (TI 16(b)) (Pat, authors’ emphasis)

T: [W]e know that we can apply Newton’s three laws to a large variety of, ah,
naturally occurring phenomena and explain what is happening and the explanations
we believe are correct. Ah, as to whether they’re correct in all conditions, um, they
may very well not be. There are peculiar things that happen out there, ah, particularly
when you talk about sub-atomic particles approaching the speed of light that seem to
defy any laws that Newton would have even considered. Um, therefore we can’t say
necessarily that they’re going to be true in all circumstances. (TI 9(a)) (Ryan)
The above quotes from Traditional teachers illustrate the typical Traditional teacher’s
position which seemed to be that physics provides objective, discovered information about
reality. Linked to this view, the typical Traditional teacher’s remarks about physics were
sometimes tinged with comments suggesting that physics is superior to other disciplines:
T: [E=mc2] is the first thing I write on the board when the kids come into the Year 11
class. In a way ... that underpins what physics is all about – it’s that relationship
between energy and mass and how fundamental that is to understanding everything
about physics. Um, and then later in semester one when we do some nuclear physics ...
we have a few seconds of, um, reverent silence to observe that ... this is not just a joke,
this is something that’s quite revealing. (TI 3(a)) (Pat, authors’ emphasis)
T: Ah, [physicists are] pedantic from the point of view that they demand a certain, um,
vocabulary, they need a certain measuring system, they’re precise in what they say,
um, if you’re drawing a force on a diagram it should be drawn on the right point
where the force is acting rather than just generally, um, so. (TI 9(b)) (Ryan)

Underpinning much of the typical Traditional teacher’s comments seemed to be the view
that physics is valuable because it discovers and represents truths about the world. The
typical Conceptual teacher also valued physics but saw this value in terms of how
satisfactorily the ideas of physics help us understand the world, and in the usefulness of its
models for making predictions about phenomena. Importantly, the typical Conceptual
teacher was not a relativist (cf. Matthews 1992), as the following examples illustrate:
C: [Physics is] all about modelling the real world. It’s all about coming to understand
the physical world in ... a reductionist sort of way, but a way, that’s consistent .... It’s a
way of understanding the physical world, a way of reducing the physical world to a
model that we can grasp and understand, and therefore understand more about the
physical world. The model comes from the physical world. We use can use the model
and ... turn the model back on the physical world to understand things that we didn’t
originally realise were there. (CI1 6) (Robert)
450 Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462

C: [M]y understanding is that [physicists] use all those sorts of things [i.e. ideas like
electrons and fields] then to make predictions and build up models ... and make them
better. And also to make predictions and then to make something that you might use,
you know, a laser or whatever, so that it’s used sort of functionally .... (CI4) (Charles,
interviewee’s emphasis)
Interestingly, one Traditional teacher (Joe), also shared the view of the typical
Conceptual teacher that the ability to predict correctly is an important feature of physics
models, although he appeared to consider physics ideas in more realist terms than the
typical Conceptual teacher.
Despite the above and following comments, the majority of teachers – both Conceptual
and Traditional – did not appear to have engaged in much philosophical thinking about
physics, as the following interview extracts illustrate:
C: I find these questions really hard to answer! (Laughing.) I never think about these
sort of things! (I feel??) really dumb! (Still laughing.) (CI4) (Caitlin)
I5: I’m ... interested in the notion of what makes [physics] a science .... I’m just trying
to get at what you think a science is. A hard question!
T: A very hard question in terms of ... internal values you’ve created over a long, long
time and to actually individualise the expression of those ideas is quite difficult, um. ...
[T]o me it’s the way the world works, ah, in a physical sense in most cases .... It’s
more the explaining of why a car works or, um, why a building doesn’t fall down or
why, ah, systems intermesh and operate with each other. So to me science is a mixture
of, um, engineering, being able to mathematically model things, ah, being able to
predict the way things are going to work or if they’re not going to work. So science is
a difficult concept. That’s a very good woolly overview! (TI 1) (Joe)
Joe, the Traditional teacher who made the second of the above comments, considered
that “experimentation in physics is the truth of the matter”: it was therefore surprising that
he did not refer to experiments in his remarks above about what he thought a science is. His
above response, and others, reinforced the conclusion that he had not previously given
much thought to this issue.

What are Teachers’ Perceptions of the Place of Mathematics in Physics?

Mathematics seemed to assume a more central role in the typical Traditional teacher’s
conception of physics than it did for the typical Conceptual teacher. The former thought of
physics as essentially mathematical and abstract:
I: [So] thinking about physics as a body of knowledge you think it is inextricably tied
[to mathematics]
T: (Interrupts.) It’s integral. It’s like asking a mechanic to go and, ah, work on your car
without taking his toolkit with him. Sir Isaac Newton, he was a classic case: invented
differential calculus so he could invent his physics problems ... (TI 3(b)) (Joe)

5
I denotes a comment or question from the interviewer.
Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462 451

T: Physics is hard. And it’s hard because the thinking skills that are required to analyse
situations, um, scenarios, phenomena, um, are very complex. Students have to
identify, um, ideas that pertain to physics concepts. They then have to know something
about each concept. Um, they have to be able to understand the relationships that, um,
are intricate to a deeper understanding of the concept and then they have to be able to
take whatever it is in the scenario or the phenomena that they are presented with and see
how that relates to the idea and the set of relationships, fit it together in some way that
makes some sort of sense. It’s not an easy thing to do. It is complex and that’s why
people do think of it as a hard subject. Um, on top of that they’re generally aware that it
requires some complex, um, mathematical skills to help you along and that’s, um, an
abstract thing which, um, turns people off. ... Abstract ways of processing aren’t
favourable to all people. (TI 2(a)) (Pat, interviewee’s emphasis)
The typical Conceptual teacher saw mathematics as a language used to express physics
ideas (with two Conceptual teachers, Caitlin and Charles, noting that it is not the only
language used in physics, giving the example of English):
C: So the formula is sort of like a summary .... Like once I’ve tied the ideas down to a
formula, it’s so much easier to just think of the formula and then, you know, think of
relationships within the formula. If you, you know, understand the way it’s been
represented, then it’s sort of easier to think about. (CI3a 2(a)) (Heather, interviewee’s
emphasis)

C: You can’t only do physics with equations. (CI3a 2(b)) (Charles)

It appeared that the typical Traditional teacher was concerned with accurately depicting
the knowledge about reality that he considered physics provides, and saw mathematics as
providing the means of doing this. By contrast, the typical Conceptual teacher, who did not
see physics ideas in such absolute terms, seemed more concerned with the essence of
physics ideas and appropriate ways of communicating them. While it could be argued that
the typical Traditional teacher’s valuing of mathematics in physics reflected his
philosophical position that the world is governed by mathematical laws, it is unlikely that
he had ever explicitly considered this question; the following extract from the interview
with one of the Traditional teachers is consistent with this conclusion.
I: And would you say generally one is looking for laws that are mathematical?
T: Um, (unintelligible words) generally, yeah (unintelligible words). Um, we always
seem to be looking at plotting graphs and to show relationships by looking at the way
the graph is and then the next step’s to try and, you know, create a mathematical
equation that gives us that graph so that we can predict or extrapolate or interpolate
within that graph. (TI 4) (Joe)
The following Conceptual teacher appeared to have given some thought to the place of
mathematics in physics, and saw mathematics as enabling the development of models that
could be tested:
C: [The power of formulas is that they enable one to take] things that are fairly
reasonably easily able to be worked out as self-evident, describe them in a simple way
mathematically and then find what falls out of them. That certainly has been the path
of modern physics ... It’s playing with different models and seeing what comes out of
452 Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462

them, to see if we can test them in the real world, to give some validity to the models –
most of the hard work is in the developing of the models and of trying to make
concrete predictions from models ... the models are mathematical and so you can’t get
away from that side of it. (CI3a 2(a)) (Robert, interviewee’s emphasis)
However, apart from the above Conceptual teacher, none of the teachers seemed to have
considered why mathematics has a place in physics.

What are Teachers’ Perceptions of the Way/s in Which the Body of Physics Knowledge is
Established?

The views about the nature of physics knowledge were more variable amongst the
Conceptual teachers than they were amongst the Traditional teachers. Some Conceptual
teachers thought of physics knowledge as constructed while others either did not or were
less explicit about this. These assertions are now further elaborated.
As summarised earlier, the typical Conceptual teacher’s views about physics were
consistent with the position that physics knowledge is socially constructed and mediated.
However, only two of the five Conceptual teachers in this research explicitly indicated that
this was their considered view:
C: [R]eally physics – while there’s a lot in physics – is really nothing more than
people’s attempts to try and understand or model in their head a[n] internally
consistent world view that maps as well as it can the physical world that we interact
with. (CI4) (Robert)

C: We have to construct an explanation of the whole universe, don’t we, [of] the
whole of our experience, not just in science .... It’s the old constructivist view. I
construct it through my experience, and my tinted vision, and tinted hearing, and all
that sort of business. (CI4) (Charles)

The other three Conceptual teachers appeared to have not given much thought to the
nature of physics and to the ways in which physics knowledge develops: however, two of
these seemed to understand that establishing the nature of reality is, in principle, difficult
because of the lens of the viewer.
C: So as ideas develop, they can change. That can be supported or refuted so it’s an
evolving thing, until the ideas get, I suppose – are almost the fashion in a lot of ways –
and it becomes popular at the time and then until something else comes along to
change it a little bit more. So it’s sort of like an evolving – well, most ideas are pretty
much evolving ideas that are changing all the time, yeah. (CI4) (Heather)
C: But, um, in terms of, in terms of my own thoughts, I’d, we really have, we’ve got a
set of things that actually seem to work but that may not, they may not be anything
like that! It’s just, it’s very hard to, well, it’s very hard to put into words actually that.
(CI3a 7(a)) (Dorothy)
Interestingly, the third (Caitlin) had much in common with the typical Traditional teacher
in that she was quite explicit that physics tells us about reality:
I: Do you essentially see science as ... mirroring what the real world is?
Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462 453

C: Yeah, I think it’s trying to explain, a lot of science is trying to explain how things
happen in the real world or they happen the way they do or whatever, yep. (CI4)
(Caitlin)
Like these latter three Conceptual teachers, the typical Traditional teacher, whose views
were summarised above, did not appear to have given much thought to the nature of
physics knowledge. Nevertheless, he appeared to think of physics knowledge as knowledge
about the real world that has been discovered using ‘the scientific method’. One of the
Traditional teachers in this research seemed to have more extreme views than the rest and to
consider physics knowledge provides an exact description of reality:
I: [What would you do if a student asked, ‘How do we know that Newton’s laws are
true?’]
T: With a situation like this I would attempt to do, um, some demonstrations, that, um,
show that the relations are in actual fact correct. I always try to look at things from a
practical sense. (TI 9) (Ross)
The other Traditional teachers appeared to consider that physics knowledge closely
approximates reality, with three being quite explicit that physics ideas could not, in
principle, be proved; this seemed to be because of the problems of proving these ideas are
true in all cases and/or of achieving the ideal conditions necessary for these ideas to be
proved, as the following quotes illustrate.
T: I don’t know if you can prove anything, because to prove that F=ma, I guess you’d
have to look at every single possible situation in the universe, and you can’t do that.
So you look at a tiny fraction of them and you say, ‘It works in these cases. I’m going
to assume that it works in other cases, ah, and I’m going to keep using it until I’m
shown to be wrong.’
I: OK, so that’s kind of what you meant [by proving]
T: (Interrupts.) Yes. I’m not too clear and I’m not too strong on what is a rule and
what’s a law and ... all of these things ...
I: So as long as it keeps working, it’s proven ...
T: (Interrupts.) Yeah, yeah. Because the ideas that are being pushed forward recently
are that maybe the laws change over time. There’s a time component and we are here
for an instant in time. We don’t know whether the laws worked the same way at the
beginning of the universe. The ideas that are being pushed forward recently are that
maybe the laws change over time. There’s a time component and we are here for an
instant in time. We don’t know whether the laws worked the same way at the
beginning of the universe. (TI 9(b)) (Chad)
T: Newton’s laws ... apply to closed systems as such and we can’t really create a
closed system but we can make [an] approximation [to test them] ... and ... see how
closely that, ah, can apply .... A pure law is a mind experiment because the reality is
that we can’t create closed systems. No matter what we try and do, there is always
some external influence to it. (TI 9(a)) (Joe)
None of the Traditional teachers indicated that they considered that the interpretation of
observations depends on the framework of the observer, a view which most of the
454 Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462

Conceptual teachers held. The two examples below are suggestive of these differing
positions:
T: [Students] seem to have not as much appreciation as I would like anyway that
[when doing a laboratory investigation] there’s other things that you should record
[apart from obvious variables] like what you hear, um, what you see, what you notice
occurring around you, so.
I: There’s always the question of how do you know what to observe though.
T: Yep. Well, well a good scientist would be filming and taping everything as well,
you know, doing very thorough research so that the whole lot would be happening. I
mean they did that when they built the first stack for the atomic reactor – they filmed it
as well, so. (TI 5(a)) (Pat))
C: [Even] physical experiments are an interpretation of what you’ve seen ... so I don’t
know that they are much closer to concrete reality [than thought experiments]. There
is always the eye of the viewer, the interpretation of the viewer in both. (CI3a 3(c))
(Robert)

What are Teachers’ Perceptions of the Difficulty with Which Physics Concepts Have Been
Developed?

Both the typical Conceptual and Traditional teachers acknowledged the importance of
experiments and observation in developing physics explanations/ideas, but the former was
inclined to see this development in more complex terms. The typical Conceptual teacher
saw physicists’ thinking about phenomena as being important in the development of physics
ideas, recognised that there are contextual influences on this thinking, and considered that it
is possible that other ways of thinking might explain the world better than, or equally as
well as, those used in physics. Some of the quotes given earlier support this conclusion,
while other examples include the following.
C: I think serious thought needs to go into [good physics research] – it ... can’t just
sort of be something plucked out of nowhere and not substantiated. So it’s got to have
been arrived [at] through something that ... has credibility, whether it’s discussion, um,
or whether ... it’s something, you know, a proven scientific process, um, using
equipment if you like for some, um, yeah. (CI3a 6) (Heather)
C: Physics is more than just the content .... What I really like about physics ... you can
do it more than [in] some other sciences, [although] I think biology is perhaps
catching up, and chemistry too a bit ... is the social implications ... what real science is.
It’s ... a sceptical view of the world ... [it’s] testing hypotheses. And it’s all tentative
anyway. And someone can come along tomorrow and wipe out a whole area of it and
[then] suddenly we’ve got this whole new field to examine .... (CI1 6) (Charles)
Robert, one of the Conceptual teachers was exceptionally eloquent:
C: Um, well I guess [physics knowledge is] not a tangible thing. It’s, um, you know
it’s hypothetical constructs in our mind, in our imagination, as a way of trying to
explain the physical world which we interact with and so it’s not a product as such that
you can hold in your hand. (Slowly.) That’s probably why it’s not quite so linear, um,
can easily be sort of seen from a different viewpoint and that’s the challenge – to
Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462 455

relook at everything .... Ultimately it comes about because human beings have this
passion to try and understand and explain the world that they are interacting with, and
really physics – while there’s a lot in physics – is really nothing more than people’s
attempts to try and understand or model in their head a[n] internally consistent world view
that maps as well as it can the physical world that we interact with. So that, I guess, is why
it’s produced and how it’s produced – but it’s the same sort of thing, I guess.
I: Talking about the constructs in the head ... what we call physics knowledge implies
that ... the constructs in the various physicists’ heads are the same about that
particular piece of information or whatever – so how do you ... see that happening?
C: Um, well I ... guess the heritage of our society that has inherited the scientific
worldview is that observable phenomena are the ultimate arbiter, rather than the eloquence
of the person that holds that viewpoint. So there is in each instance a definite attempt to
demonstrate from observable phenomena alone, if that is possible, um, that a particular
view or model or construct is consistent .... There is also the Occam’s Razor thing there
too – that we tend to sort of go for what is the simplest, um, complete, internally consistent
world view. So there is also that sort of attempt – reductionism I guess – reductionism to
an elegant, um, model. So probably driving all that I think, and certainly over history, has
been a belief that the universe is governed by intrinsically understandable and probably
ultimately elegant principles, and so there’s been a real desire to find those principles.
I: So do you ...see the theory coming first and then the observables or the other way
around or it’s a mixture of everything?
C: I think it’s very much a mixture of the two. I mean the observable phenomena
strike the question, and, you know, strike that chord in people’s hearts – ultimately in
their hearts – to want to know, and then the theories come, and, in our culture of
scientific investigation, a good theory is one that make predictions that we can then turn to
the observable world and test whether that theory does actually hold out. We extrapolate it
beyond the original observations. So they both – it’s sort of one and the other – you know,
one time it’s an observation that leads you and another time it’s the theory that then comes,
and then you look for observations that support or discredit that theory. (CI4) (Robert)
The typical Traditional teacher tended to think of physics knowledge as ‘out there’ to be
discovered, and that the difficulty of developing physics explanations and ideas amounts
mainly to technical difficulties such as the accuracy of measurements:
T: [I]f we go way back a long, long way to, um, explorers, where they figured that,
um, if they were on the sea, there was a horizon there. If they went beyond that, they’d
fall over the edge; and it’s not until you actually experiment and go out in a boat and realise
that it doesn’t finish, um, then they come up with different explanations. (TI 4) (Ross)
T: [Physicists do experiments] confirming, um, or possibly also trying to disprove,
um, people’s theories, um. And in, through that process to try and get better data to
more accurately confirm or ascertain a value or a rule. But in doing so, ... sometimes,
um, unforeseen, um, information is revealed like data that’s not consistent with what
you’re expecting and then that prompts further investigation which is purely to try and
focus on what is causing that particular glitch in the data. So that can be a very open-
ended, um, investigation compared with something which is specifically aimed or
targeted at confirming an idea, or. (TI 5(a) (Pat)
One Conceptual teacher (Caitlin) also seemed to share this view.
456 Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462

C: [S]sometimes [physicists] get it wrong and things are re-thought, perhaps. Um, I
mean there’ve been different things over time that have been decided, you know, things
been proposed down through the ages that turned out to be wrong. So I think that people
can get things wrong, um, until, I s’pose, they do something that proves that the way
they’ve predicted doesn’t happen that way or something. Um, sometimes it might [be]
accepted for a while as being true, but not actually be really right. (CI4) (Caitlin)
Interestingly, similar to the above teachers’ views that over time physics knowledge
becomes an increasingly more accurate representation of reality, Roth and Roychoudhury
(1994) found that secondary physics students believed that “scientists would increasingly
approximate truth” (p. 27).

Conclusion

This paper began by suggesting that particular physics teaching approaches may be linked
to particular views about physics. In this study, however, which compared the views of
physics teachers whose practice was traditional with those who used conceptual change
teaching approaches, such a link seemed to apply to the Traditional group but not to the
Conceptual group. Instead, the Conceptual teachers’ views about physics ranged from a
social constructivist perspective to the more realist views of the Traditional teachers, who
tended to see physics as discovered, close approximations of reality. That is, the range of
views about physics held by the Conceptual teachers overlapped those held by the
Traditional group. Interestingly though, the Conceptual teachers as a group tended to have
more complex views about physics than the Traditional teachers.
However, perhaps the most significant finding of this study, and one consistent with that
by Lakin and Wellington (1994) in their research of science teachers’ views, is that most of
the physics teachers (both Conceptual and Traditional) appeared to have given little thought
to the nature of physics and physics knowledge prior to being interviewed, nor to have
considered the place of mathematics in physics. Indeed, further research (Mulhall 2005)
suggests that the teaching practices of these two groups were more strongly linked to their
views about the nature of physics learning than to their view about physics.

Implications

Contemporary pre- and in-service teacher education programs tend to promote reflective
practice and constructivist ideas, and take the view that learning to teach is a lifelong
process. Nevertheless, traditional approaches to teaching in all subjects seem to persist – old
beliefs die hard. This is a problem in physics teaching because, as discussed earlier, the
traditional approaches used often fail to promote adequate student understanding of physics
ideas. The challenge then is to find ways of promoting teacher change, of helping physics
teachers understand and implement ways of teaching that lead to better student learning.
That there was some overlap in the present study between the Traditional group and the
Conceptual group of physics teachers in terms of the range of views about physics suggests
assumptions about teachers’ views about physics on the basis of their teaching approach
may be invalid, and that a given teacher’s teaching approach may be linked to other
“weightier beliefs” (Munby 1982, p. 216). Indeed, as already noted, the study by Mulhall
(2005) found stronger links between teachers’ views about learning physics and their
teaching practice. Thus it could be argued that if the goal of physics teacher education is to
Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462 457

develop teachers who use conceptual change teaching approaches, focussing on helping
teachers to understand physics learning from a constructivist perspective may be more
effective than trying to promote social constructivist views about the nature of physics.
However, there are important counter arguments to this position which we now discuss.
Firstly, the physics teachers in both groups did not appear to have given much thought to
the nature of physics and how physics knowledge develops. There is a general recognition
that science teachers need to be knowledgeable about the nature of science if they are to
help their students develop adequate understandings about the nature of science, which is
not only a common curriculum goal (e.g. Lederman 1992) but also an important factor in
promoting students’ meaningful learning of science in ways that will help them as future
citizens to make sense of scientific debates that have social implications (Driver et al.
1996). In the context of teaching physics then, physics teachers need to have well
considered and informed views about physics to achieve these outcomes.
A second reason why physics teachers need to have informed views about physics arises
from studies which suggest that activities that are common in physics classrooms may
influence students’ perceptions about physics in ways that negatively impact on their
physics learning. For example, the use of mathematics to describe relationships between
concepts may lead students to believe that physics describes the way the world is (Roth and
Bowen 1994, p. 314), a view which, as noted earlier, promotes poor student learning
behaviours and outcomes (Linder 1992; Osborne 1990). While changing students’ views
about physics may in itself be problematic, programs that explore issues attached to the
nature of physics may help physics teachers to be sensitive to their students’ perceptions
and inform their approach to teaching physics. To this end, research by Abd-El-Khalick (2005)
indicates that pre-service science teachers were more reflective about implicit messages in
their teaching practices after participating in a philosophy of science course that was designed
to engage them in thinking about various issues concerning the nature of science (p. 37).
Finally, as noted earlier, programs for improving practising and pre-service teachers’
nature of science conceptions that have explicitly considered aspects of the history and
philosophy of science have been more successful, albeit in a limited way, than those that
use implicit process skills inquiry or based approaches (Abd-El-Khalick and Lederman
2000a). The present study suggests that for physics teachers, there is a need for such courses
to include a consideration of the role of mathematics in physics. In addition, drawing physics
teachers’ attention to the difficulty with which physics ideas have been developed and
constructed by physicists may help physics teachers understand the difficulty that learners
have in understanding these ideas. Ultimately, physics teachers need to reflect on the
implications of the history and philosophy of physics for learning and teaching physics.

Appendix 1

Examples of interview questions

1. A friend’s daughter/son is choosing their subjects for VCE [i.e. Years 11 &12]. Your
friend is uncertain about what subjects their child should do and asks you “What is
physics?” What would you say?
3. (a) Many people have seen the formula

E ¼ mc2 ðshow formula on a cardÞ:

In your opinion, how accurately does a formula like this portray what physics is?
458 Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462

(b) If necessary
What do you consider to be the relationship between mathematics and physics?
4. How is physics knowledge produced?
5. (a) Why do physicists do experiments (explore what interviewee means by
‘experiments’, ‘prove’, ‘theory’, ‘research’ etc. if mentioned)?
(b) If not obvious from (a)
How are experiments and research related?
(c) If not obvious from (a) and/or (b)
Is it possible to do physics research without doing experiments?
10. You are a teacher. But why a teacher of physics?
(Important issues to attempt to follow here:
–Why teach physics rather than maths? How do you see physics and maths as
differing?
–Why teach physics rather than other science(s)? How do you see physics and other
sciences as differing?)
11. (a) What is the hardest thing for you in teaching physics (probe to explore, if
possible, ways their views of the nature of physics and understanding of physics
are part of this)?
(b) Is this ‘hardest thing’ constant across all content areas of physics (if no, explore
mechanics and electricity specifically)?
12. (a) What is the easiest thing for you in teaching physics (probe to explore, if
possible, ways their views of the nature of physics and understanding of physics
are part of this)?
(b) Is this ‘easiest thing’ constant across all content areas of physics (if no, explore
mechanics and electricity specifically)?
13. (a) What sort of teaching strategies do you value using most with your physics
class? Why?
(b) What, if any, are the strengths of these strategies?
(c) You’ve mentioned the strengths, are there any weaknesses in these strategies?
(d) Do you use these strategies only with physics classes or can they be used for
other subjects as well?
16. (a) If a Year 11 physics student asked you for advice on how to learn physics, what
would you tell them?
(b) Do you think this is what the average Year 11 student does?
17. I want to show you a number of things I’ve heard students say during physics classes
I’ve been in either as a teacher or as an observer over the past 20 years. I’d like you to
comment on each one, particularly in terms of the understanding of physics the
student/students seem to have (show cards with each of the comments below).
(a) In a Year 12 class discussion on momentum, a student said,
“But if a car crashes into a tree then there was momentum with the car and now
there isn’t any momentum. So momentum isn’t conserved there.”
Another student replied,
“But you have to also consider what happened to the tree – it will be a real mess
after the collision.”
Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462 459

(b) In a Year 11 electricity class, a student said,

“...as the electrons leave the battery, push their way through the connecting wires,
the light globe and back to the battery ...”
(c) In a small group discussion in a Year 11 electricity class, a student said,
“But a brighter globe means a larger current.”
(d) In a class discussion a Year 11 student said,
"According to Newton’s third law of motion, two teams having a tug of war must
always pull equally hard on one another. If this were true, it would be impossible
for either team to win."

Appendix 2

Table 2 Common aspects of traditional teachers’ views about physics

Views about physics Teacher codea

Physics is mathematical Cd, Rn, Rs, Je, Pt

Physics is a science Cd, Rn, Rs, Je, Pt
Physics is hard to understand Rn, Rs, Je, Pt
Physics can be hard to understand Cd
Physics is abstract Rn, Rs, Je, Pt
Physics is about explaining the real world Cd, Rn, Rs, Je, Pt
& and is a close approximation of this Cd, Rn, Je, Pt
& and is an exact description of this Rs
Physics is how the universe operates Cd, Rn, Rs, Pt
Physics is everywhere around us Cd, Rn, Rs, Je, Pt
Most physics knowledge is based on experimentation Cd, Rs, Je, Pt
Good physics research follows the ‘scientific method’ Cd, Rn, Rs, Je
Physicists decide what to investigate on basis of things other than Cd, Rn, Je, Pt
‘blue sky curiosity’:
& Funding Cd, Rn, Je, Pt
& Boss/faculty’s decision/political agendas Cd, Rn, Je, Pt
Comments expressing a valuing of physics and suggestive of ways Cd, Rn, Rs, Je, Pt
in which it is ‘better’ than other disciplines:
& Physics has an inner beauty Cd, Rn, Pt
& Physicists are pedantic Rn
& Physicists are practical Rs
& References to ‘reverent silence’ about E=mc2 and ‘power of maths’ Pt
revealing ideas
& All other sciences developed from physics Rn
& Physics is the ‘father’ of all subjects Je
a
The traditional teachers’ names were coded Cd, Je, Pt, Rn and Rs respectively
460 Res Sci Educ (2008) 38:435–462

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