A Research on the Conceptual Organization of Physics’ Curriculum and Standards

We outline the most significant features of a research conducted in the last years within three National Research Projects. First, we will discuss some shared, strategic research-choices and guidelines, validated by research results. Then, by a bottom-up approach, we will focus our attention on problems related to long-term Physics’ curricular planning and to a correlated schematic Standards’ definition. We propose to structure the phenomenological side of the curriculum according to eight content areas. Some structuring concepts and processes are made explicit as teaching/learning strategies (corresponding to ways of thinking, ways to look-at, modes of action, ways to talk about, etc). Such “universal categorisation tools” should be introduced from the very beginning of the talking-about and of the acting-on aspects of the physical world, and progressively explicated, formalised, reciprocally structured. Several levels of giving shape to (formalising) physical phenomena should thus become gradually accessible, keeping in mind that all the ones up to a given level are actually necessary for meaningful understanding.