Teaching the basic concepts of the Special Relativity in the secondary school in the framework of the Theory of Conceptual Fields of Vergnaud

OTERO MARIA RITA; ARLEGO MARCELO; FABIANA PRODANOFF

Palermo

Congreso; GIREP-MPTL International Conference on Teaching/Learning Physics: Integrating Research into Practice; 2014

We investigate the conceptualization of basic aspects of Special Relativity (SR) at secondary school level.We have carried out our research along the lines of the Theory of Conceptual Fields (TCF) proposed by Vergnaud (Vergnaud, 2013).We have designed, implemented and evaluated a didactic sequence to conceptualize basic aspects of SR. At the beginning the proposal was composed by eight situations, complemented with a set of exercises.It was carried out in two classrooms with students of the last year of secondary level (17 years old), (N= 43).The conceptualization was analyzed in a classroom context, where the selected situations are essential to promote the emergence of the relevant concepts.