Educational reconstruction of physics content to be taught and of pre-service teacher training: a case study

This paper reports an explorative study in which innovations in a piece of physics curriculum for high school level have been converted into innovations in methods and contents for physics teacher education. The case study concerns the teaching of physics modelling in a pre-service teacher training course. The structure and content of the course have been both organized in order to prepare teachers to carry out the teaching tasks required from the proposed teaching/learning approach. This approach involves substantial modifications in learning sequences as well as in the teacher's role and in teaching methods. The course intends to give to prospective teachers experience of the same learning environments as they are supposed to realize in their future classrooms and to make them reflect upon the dynamics of their experiences in order to generate metalearning development. The qualitative results that have been collected suggest that metareflection helps prospective teachers to generate significant changes in their teaching/learning approach.