Activation of a critical attitude in prospective teachers: From research investigations to guidelines for teacher education

Abstract

This paper is inspired by the widely accepted need to develop critical thinking in physics students and teachers. More specifically, it is focused on the development of a critical attitude in prospective physics teachers. The question of a possible interplay between the development of conceptual comprehension and that of a critical attitude prompted us to conduct a series of investigations with teachers at the end of their preparation. The goal of this paper is to provide a synthesis of five previously published papers on this topic in order to inform discussion about teacher preparation. Each investigation is centered on a particular aspect of physics, and all are based on in-depth interviews with different participants. We focus on prospective teachers' "intellectual dynamics," that is, the way their comprehension of nonobvious topics and their critical attitudes evolve during these interviews, taking into account metacognitive and affective aspects such as intellectual satisfaction and self-esteem. We characterize several types of intellectual dynamics: "early critique," "delayed critique," "unstable critique," and "expert anesthesia" and provide information on their frequency. An overall conclusion is that in this type of context, that is, a guided intellectual pathway of about an hour, the development of conceptual comprehension and critical attitude are most often deeply entangled. We discuss the implications of these results for future research and we advocate new objectives and strategies for physics teachers' preparation.

Developing critical analysis of explanations in physics teachers: which direction to take?

“…Table 1. Three types of critical response when discussing a questionable explanation in physics [13] Type of critical response…”

“…The approach is analytical-that is, it applies various criteria to assess the quality of an explanation by means of a multifaceted 'quality diagnosis'. Based on previous research [13], a twofold grid details possible flaws that would lead to the rejection of a given explanation or raise strong doubts about it, along with risk factors that may lead to misunderstanding or critical passivity in relation to an explanatory text. The grid can be completed, in particular by listing the positive aspects of each explanation, such as conceptual simplicity, generalizability, mnemonic value or other criteria.…”

Misleading mathematical legitimacy and critical passivity: discussing the irreversible expansion of an ideal gas with beginning teachers

“…One crucial issue concerns the links between conceptual and critical development, and this question is explored here in the context of physics. In a previous series of studies based on in-depth interviews with beginning teachers (BTs), the angle of attack was to examine the links between conceptual and critical development in this population when discussing contestable explanations of various physical topics [1]. We observed three main types of interplay between critical attitude and development of conceptual comprehension in the course of an interview.…”

“…Regarding RQ3, transcript processing was focused on the occurrence of argument C3, that is: "It is contestable to use such a demonstration in class without any critical discussion". As in previous studies [1,4], statements referring to the critical arguments upon which the study is focused -in this case, C1, C2 or C3 -were coded using three levels of critique, with each code index (1, 2 or 3) referring to one of the three arguments. An unambiguous and firm critique was coded  (ritique), an unambiguous and firm acceptance was coded cceptation) and a mitigated comment was coded itigated comment.…”

“…Given the small sample and indepth analysis, this is a 'case study' type of investigation. However, the number of concerned participants is available for all categories, permitting a very modest but nonetheless quantitative approach that can be used subsequently as part of a cumulative approach to synthesize several studies (as we have previously done in [1], p. 10).…”