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The evolution of classroom physics knowledge in relation to certainty and uncertainty
Author(s) -
Tiberghien Andrée,
Cross David,
Sensevy Gérard
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of research in science teaching
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.067
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1098-2736
pISSN - 0022-4308
DOI - 10.1002/tea.21152
Subject(s) - certainty , epistemology , relation (database) , philosophy , psychology , humanities , sociology , computer science , database
This paper deals with the joint construction of knowledge by the teacher and the students in a physics classroom. It is focused on the status of epistemic certainty/uncertainty of knowledge. The same element of knowledge can be introduced as possible and thus uncertain and then evolve towards a status of epistemic certainty; the status of other elements can do the reverse. The evolution of a certainty/uncertainty status reflects the evolution of the shared knowledge in the classroom. The study of this evolution is based on a previous analysis of the evolution of knowledge in a classroom during a teaching sequence of mechanics at grade 10. From this analysis two notions were selected and the evolution of the elements of knowledge associated was analyzed in terms of epistemic certainty/uncertainty. The results show how the emergence of new epistemic questions depends on the nature and status of student's prior knowledge; in other terms, new epistemic uncertainty emerges from epistemic certainty. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 51:930–961, 2014.