Playing with light (original) (raw)
Related papers
Light: an experiments based learning approach with primary school children
12th Education and Training in Optics and Photonics Conference, 2014
A pedagogical intervention project was carried out at a primary school in the municipality of Vila Verde, Braga in Portugal. In a class of the 3 rd grade, composed of 16 students, a practice of inquiry-based science teaching was implemented, addressing the curricular topic "Light Experiments". Various experimental activities were planned within this topic, including: What is light? How does light travel? Does light travel through every material? How is light reflected by a mirror? This project adopted an action research methodology and had as its main objectives: a) to promote a practical and experimental approach to the science component of the Environmental Studies curricular area; b) to describe the scientific meaning construction process inherent to the topics addressed in the classroom with the children, c) to assess the learning steps and children' achievements. Class diaries were prepared, based on field notes and audio recordings taken in the classroom. Through the analysis of the class diary concerning the topic "materials that let light travel through them" we intend to illustrate the process of construction of scientific meanings promoted in the classroom with our approach.
How might educational research into children’s ideas about light be of use to teachers?
This paper offers a synthesis of research evidence around teaching light to secondary school pupils, as part of the Institute of Physics (IOP) Promoting and Interpreting Physics Education Research (PIPER) project. Conceptual change literature describes many difficulties young people have with understanding the phenomenon of light, and while this knowledge can be useful in the classroom, how best to address these issues is not something which can be proscribed by the research community. Teaching must be adapted to the particular needs of the learners in each group as each lesson unfolds. This paper highlights a range of influences on pupils from everyday life and from the classroom, with a view to promoting teacher awareness of conceptual change research evidence.
2016
This paper describes the experiences of first grade students as they are introduced to inquiry experiences and begin to develop skills and dispositions conducive to the practice of scientific literacy. The Guided Inquiry Instruction on light was the culmination of seven months of the teacher's professional development experiences in an orientation to teaching called Guided Inquiry supporting Multiple Literacies (GIsML), (Magnusson and Palincsar, 1995). The class consisted of 24 students, ages ranging from 5 years and 10 months to 7 years and 2 months, attending first grade in a school in a small farming community south of Ann Arbor, Michigan. The paper describes the unfolding of GIsML instruction illustrating different phases of the heuristic. It gives directions for construction of the light box used, made by the teacher from an ordinary corrugated cardboard box, with a white rectangular piece of posterboard for a screen. The paper details the four cycles of instruction and th...
Understanding Teaching-Learning Context in Developing Students' Ideas on 'Light'
Wr itte n b y Rake sh Ku ma r Assista n t Pr o fe sso r M. V. CO L L EG E O F EDU CAT IO N, Un ive r sity o f De lh i. Abstract Accumulated research findings on Alternative Frameworks on children show that they are resistent to change. While concept specific researches on these Alternative Frameworks in general focus on their nature, an equallly important dimension is neglected. This dimension pertains to the context in which these conceptual frameworks are developing. In the present study the science learning context had been explored while the topic/area of explorations was 'LIGHT'. About the first classroom the study reveals that learners did not want to ask more questions as may they not have been interested in this topic or maybe they did not understand it; Some learners shared information with parents and at tuition; many learners drew figures and used scientific words like filament bulb, torch, terminal, electrical cell; most of them who did not use scientific words, were not interested in study of science; learners had their own perceptions and understandings; that is why they were asking different questions and it also happened that the same question was being asked by different learners. It follows then that if the learners would be given freedom to think on their own, they are more able to think in many dimensions. About the second classroom the study reveals that most of the learners liked to talk to their parents to solve their questions; teachers should use materials found in their surroundings to plan effective lessons; learners learned and enjoyed the activities and group tasks. And, about the third classroom the study reveals that the learner learned more through activity and discussion; learners also searched for activities related to topic from internet or asked their parents; teacher felt that she should use more activities to involve properly.
Tracing the Light. A performance essay on space, light and the process of looking.
Contemporary Performance Lighting, 2022
A blacked-out room. The floor is marked out with white tape: a rectangle, between 3 and 5 metres long, divided into four smaller rectangles. A further line extends out from the middle of one short side. From overhead, tightly shuttered lights pick out the tape lines without lighting the remainder of the floor. The light beams are invisible in the air, and the tape seems to glow of its own accord. To one side, a table, carrying several viewfinders, each comprising a piece of clear Perspex the size of an A4 sheet of paper, with a handle to hold it by. Traces is an interactive light installation by Nick Hunt and Hansjörg Schmidt, initially created for the Performing Light symposium at the University of Leeds in 2017. Since its initial appearance in Leeds, Traces has been recreated in a variety of forms, changing in scale and technical implementation, and in some instantiations including a performer/dancer as a surrogate participant. Arising from the Library of Light project at Rose Bruford College, Traces began as a response to the challenge of capturing and archiving light's role in the experience of seeing. As it has developed, Traces has become an artistic work in its own right, as well as an action-research investigation.
A Pedagogy of Attention to the Light in the Eyes
Knowing from the Inside: Cross-Disciplinary Experiments with Matters of Pedagogy, 2022
When seeking ways to respond more adequately to the rapid and deep social and ecological transformations that are taking place in the world, a place to start may be to make an effort to envisage a very different type of education. Not one that is predominantly based on transmission of existing knowledge, but perhaps a form of teaching and learning that foregrounds how we can persevere under and engage with conditions of radical uncertainty. In more open-ended modalities of education, participants tend not to know on forehand what the outcomes and expected deliverables will be. Such approaches may cause a sense of unease because of a presumed lack of control, of not having a set frame of guidelines and clear target objectives. In this chapter the author suggests that a way of achieving this may be through employing arts-based approaches with groups of participants. His experience is that it is essential that participants can anticipate and trust that their experience will be safely contained and held by the teachers and facilitators concerned, when they are encouraged to allow for a state of vulnerability while surrendering to the group process. Such artful exploring can be most rewarding if it ignites curiosity, prompts excitement, and even may cause participants to be overcome by a sense of wonder. Then they may attain a sense of being ‘fully present’ in and attentive to the unfolding open-ended process. To the author, such a state of enthusiastic anticipation of (and subsequent participation in) the artful educational event is a key feature of what he calls “a pedagogy of attention to the light in the eyes.” With this somewhat poetic notion he aims to express a visceral, for the most part tacit feature of which one “knows that is there, when it is there”. It is a quality that, along with other qualities – resists definition. When teachers feel grounded enough to embark and guide their students on a journey into new terrain, and they have little or no prior idea of where the undertaking will take both them and their students, they may experience and express a degree of enthusiasm that they are about to try out something new and daring, which may also fail. This excitement may show itself in a sparkling in their eyes. In such cases this ‘excitement-through-engagement’ can be a trigger to produce the ignition of a matching vivacity in the eyes of the student-participants. If this happens, a new field of potentiality may seem to open up, in which things are possible which simply may have been considered unattainable previously. The ‘radiance of light’ of the one may generate an answering light in the eye of the other, which then seems to reflect back into the eyes of others, causing a dissemination through mutual reinforcement. The author, on basis of his own experience, tries to explore this phenomenon, contextualizes it through a meditation on the pre-modern idea of sight originating from the eye into the world.
Teaching Light: Constructing Knowledge Across Multiple Dimensions
Light is a potent condition of architectural ambiance; its many dimensions defy classification as art, science, or function. This paper proposes advancing the teaching of light by utilizing a pedagogical framework grounded in constructivist learning and cognitive flexibility theory. The framework presents multiple representations of light, enabling the learner to develop flexibility in" criss-crossing" its various dimensions while acquiring authentic knowledge for application to unique design problems. The overarching goal is to empower designers ...
Science Education, 2005
This case study documents an example of inquiry learning and teaching during a summer institute for elementary and middle school teachers. A small group constructed an explanatory model for an intriguing optical phenomenon that they were observing. Research questions included: What physics thinking did the learners express? What aspects of scientific inquiry were evident in what the learners said and did? What questions did the learners ask one another as they worked? How did these learners collaborate in constructing Correspondence to:
Investigating shadows: a pedagogical intervention project with primary school children
12th Education and Training in Optics and Photonics Conference, 2014
This communication results from a pedagogical intervention project, carried out at a primary school in the district of Braga-Portugal. The intervention took place in a class of the 3 rd year, composed of 16 students, and it incorporated the practice of inquiry-based science teaching addressing the theme "Light Experiments", which is part of the "Environmental Studies" curricular area. Various class activities were planned and implemented concerning some of the factors that influence the shadow of an object, in order to find answers to the following three questions: a) will 3 rd year students, aged 7/8 years, be able to construct and execute an investigation strategy that involves manipulating and controlling variables? b) what are the main difficulties experienced by students in the designing and execution of such a strategy? c) how will students, in interaction with the teacher and with their peers, gradually design and execute their investigation strategy in order to respond to the problem formulated? The project adopted an action research methodology. A careful record was kept of the events most relevant to the questions under study in each class. This data was used to prepare the class diaries-descriptive and reflective narratives prepared based on recorded audio and field notes made during participant observation in the context of the classroom. A content analysis of the diaries has identified a few elements that provide answers to the research questions raised. In order to plan and implement a research project with children in the 7/8 years old range require a high level of scaffolding to allow students to gradually build a coherent strategy to tackle the research problem. Teacher's role is crucial. The teacher, by questioning and inducing reasoning and discussion, promotes encourages and regulates the cognitive activity of students. Some level of autonomy should be given to the students in large group collaborative work.
Education Sciences
The present qualitative study investigates the conceptual representations of 132 preservice Quebec elementary teachers regarding matter–light interaction (reflection, refraction, and absorption) and the size of the shadow of an object on the Earth’s surface illuminated by sunlight. A paper-and-pencil questionnaire composed of six questions was constructed and managed. The data analyses demonstrate that most encounter several conceptual difficulties in explaining phenomena related to light, which are omnipresent in their immediate environment and with which they interact daily. The conceptual difficulties identified in analyzing the students’ explanations were as follows: (1) a black-colored body absorbs all light rays; (2) light travels rectilinearly and stops when it hits a white paper; (3) a mirror reflects light; it does not absorb it; (4) the glass surface of a mirror reflects light; (5) specular reflection and diffuse reflection are confused; and (6) the shadow varies during th...