Educational research in physics teacher education: the role of mathematics in physics teaching

Abstract Do student teachers benefit from contact with research, as required in our national teacher education curriculum? This paper describes the experiences of two pre-service teachers, who learned about common challenges encountered in the intersection between mathematics and physics. After a literature survey, they decided to try out a few questions with second-year high-school students (age 17). One of the student teachers constructed a pre- and post-test, confirming earlier results that students perform better on computational tasks. The second pre-service teacher included a few additional questions on a test given by another teacher. Based on the results on the test, four students were selected for interviews. The students interviewed all stated that they spend the majority of their time on calculations, whereas none of them had the habit of reading the textbook to understand the concepts. The interviews also revealed that solving a problem does not guarantee that the student understands the calculation. All students described a strategy of looking for a suitable formula on the sheet provided and just inserting numbers given. Through the test and the interviews, the student teachers gained training in assessment and an increased awareness of conceptual challenges and also of what Physics Education Research can offer.