MASTER IDIFO (INNOVAZIONE DIDATTICA IN FISICA E ORIENTAMENTO): A COMMUNITY OF ITALIAN PHYSICS EDUCATION RESEARCHERS AND TEACHERS AS A MODEL FOR A RESEARCH BASED IN-SERVICE TEACHER DEVELOPMENT IN MODERN PHYSICS.

Abstract

Since 2005, the Italian Universities have promoted initiatives for school-university cooperation in the framework of a national project (PLS) to face the problems of a substantial scienti c illiteracy in young people and a worrying decreasing interest in physics emerging from OCSE-PISA data. The project PLS is nanced by the Ministry for Education and Universities and coordinates 65 local university projects in mathematics, physics, chemistry and material science. The collaboration of Universities with teachers in the PLS physics section is an important goal realized in different ways. The Italian university Physics Education Research Unit (IPERU), cooperating with national research projects on physics education over the last 15 years, joined in a proposal for PLS consisting of a national pilot II level Master (post Master Degree) on innovations in teaching and learning physics and guidance for in-service teacher development in modern physics and problem solving. The Master (Master IDIFO) is realized through the cooperation of 15 IPERU, led by Udine. The Physics Education Research (PER) is present in the Master IDIFO in various dimensions: the materials used for teacher development are research products, and the activities proposed include research-based school experiments (teaching experiments). The development processes in the context of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is monitored to individualise elements for a model of in-service teacher development in modern physics. In this contribution the characteristics of the Master IDIFO and signi cant aspects of its realization are discussed, in terms of a community where a fruitful interaction between school teachers and researchers produces a research-based model for teacher development. In ve case studies discussed in detail the main problems for curricula innovation are in the elds of relativity, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and the structure of matter, with relative research methods offering a bridge between research and education.