Pre-service teachers’ vocabularies of the language of science in the context of learning about electrons and photons

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

Abstract

Teaching and learning the language of science is an important part of science education. Learning the vocabulary of science plays a key role in learning the language of science. The meaning of abstract scientific terms builds on their connections with other terms and how they are used. In this research, we study pre-service physics teachers’ physics-related vocabularies and investigate how rich a vocabulary they use and what similarities and differences there are in their vocabularies regarding electrons and photons. We investigate the connectedness of physics terms by categorizing them according to their role in explaining quantum physics and carry out a lexical network analysis for N=60 written reports. The analysis shows that vocabularies do not share much similarity and the reports reflect narrow images of photons and electrons. We conclude that science teacher education needs to pay attention to explicit teaching of the language of science for pre-service teachers.
Original languageEnglish
JournalLUMAT: International Journal on Math, Science and Technology Education
Volume11
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)1–34
Number of pages34
ISSN2323-7112
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 22 Jun 2023
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

Fields of Science

  • 114 Physical sciences
  • the language of science
  • pre-service teachers
  • quantum physics

Cite this