A TOOL TO SUPPORT LECTURERS’ COURSE DEVELOPMENT AT INTRODUCTORY UNDERGRADUATE LEVEL IN PHYSICS

Abstract

With more diversified student groups entering the university, the development and planning of courses become more pedagogically challenging. In earlier studies, a validated tool, content representation (CoRe), has been used in teacher education to help pre-service teachers identify and promote pedagogical content knowledge in limited teaching sequences. In the present research the aim is to explore whether CoRe, when applied to an introductory university course in physics, can (i) promote the pedagogical content knowledge of the course as a whole and (ii) serve as an operative tool to identify problematic areas or areas that need further development in the course. The CoRe tool is based on given questions to be answered in relation to the “big ideas” of the course. In the present research, the questions have been answered by a lecturer and by using a content analysis of the answers several categories of development could be identified. For a specific category, the tool also provided information about what kind of development was necessary. The conclusion is that CoRe has a potential to be of service at higher education level, it can be applied to parts of a course as well as to a course as a whole, and it may provide a useful tool to help a lecturer in the development and planning of a course. Key words: content representation; course development; physics education; university level, pedagogical content knowledge.