A model of teacher preparation aimed at favouring the diffusion of research-based teaching practice

Despite the number of research results and proposals, physics learning of secondary school students remains often unsatisfactory and science teaching maintains some characteristics considered ineffective by research. To challenge this situation, we have elaborated and tested a model of teacher preparation aimed at favouring the diffusion in schools of innovative teaching practice. The model is focused on analysis and discussion of research-based teaching learning sequences developed by our group and involves three steps. In the first one, teachers analyze a research-based teaching proposal. They follow the same path designed for secondary school students, but they are guided to reflect both on the content and on the didactical aspects. Then each teacher prepares a teaching plan for a specific teaching situation and implements it in class. Finally she/he produces a report on his/her work in classroom and discusses it with the whole working group. We have experimented modules concerning different physics topics. As an example, we summarize our module on hydrostatics and the results obtained. We found that the module leads teachers to reconsider the science content, jointly with the teaching approach, and that their personal reconstruction of the topic in a didactical perspective produces a motivation to change their teaching