The role of context and culture in teaching physics: The implication of disciplinary differences

Abstract

The theme of the World Conference on Physics Education 2012 is "Context, Culture, and Representations." In this talk I present a brief outline of a theoretical framework that allows us to discuss these issues using a model based in psychology and sociology: the resources framework. The framework brings together a model of individual behavior based on brain function with a model of how the behavior of an individual is controlled by the individual's perception of the social context they find themselves in. This control process is the process I refer to as "framing". In the paper I give three experiments that the reader can carry out for themselves that illustrate the basic principles of the framework. I then discuss a number of specific examples showing how framing can have powerful effects leading to context dependence and cultural responses at a variety of levels and grain sizes. One such is the impact of differences between the epistemological stances of physics and biology on the creation of a reformed physics class for biology students.

22 pages, 14 figures; paper based on keynote address given at World Conference on Physics Education, Istanbul, July 2012