The Teaching Of Physical Concepts In The View Of Constructivism

Constructivism is one of the most influential theories in the domain of physics education. Its core thought is: learning is not a passive process of receiving knowledge, but an active process of construction which is based on one's own knowledge and experience. The ideology of constructivism not only involves philosophical standpoint, such as epistemology and teleology in education, but also relates closely to teaching practice. Constructivism provides a necessary theory framework from a wider aspect for us to do intensive research on the teaching of physics. This thesis focuses on how to teach physical concepts in the light of constructivism.The first part of the thesis comments on the theory of constructivism. Firstly, it introduces briefly the origin and the development of constructivism, then it relates the classification of constructivism and the learning theory of constructivism in details. Finally, it reviews constructivism from epistemology to learning theory, indicating that constructivism has become the theoretical basis of innovating traditional instruction. In the second part, the thesis analyses the essence of constructing physical concepts and put forward a new teaching mode of physical concepts based on constructivism. In the third part, the thesis makes a full-scale discussion on the teaching mode, including the common procedure of physical concepts teaching and the relative methodology, involving some specific questions: the representation of physical concepts, the application of meta-cognition strategy, the change of misconceptions and the development of meta-knowledge. At last, the thesis points out that constructivism has great significance to innovate the physics teaching.