Using PER to Restructure Physics Knowledge

Much physics education research (PER) has been focussed on the process of learning, without questioning the suitability of the subject matter. In this paper I focus on a research‐based approach to course content which aims to avoid later unlearning. I describe a rationale and an associated methodology for restructuring physics knowledge in order to make it more accessible and digestible for novice learners. There are three stages: (1) selection of the students’ final knowledge state and analysis of its structure as defined in standard texts (the canonical knowledge); (2) analysis of the structures of knowledge about the physical world held by typical naive students (the novice knowledge) as revealed by PER; (3) generation of new knowledge structures linking novice knowledge to canonical knowledge, using contexts and examples which build upon students’ experiences and real‐world knowledge. The first stage involves judgments about the desired canonical knowledge, selecting what the teacher considers to be the really important learning outcomes and ignoring, at least temporarily, traditional intermediate steps. The second stage makes extensive use of published findings about relevant primitive knowledge elements and conceptual structures commonly used by students when they start a physics course. It also includes selection of common pre‐conceptions which can be used in a constructive way. An important goal of the third stage is to optimise the path from naive knowledge to canonical knowledge, eliminating unnecessary or peripheral items, while maintaining the logical rigor of the accepted canon. The restructured knowledge maps should provide course outlines and scaffolding for revised texts. I include one practice example.