Andrea Redfors Research

Current projects

The Role of Mathematics for Teaching and Learning in Physics, VR-UV

Andreas Redfors, Lena Hansson, Örjan Hansson and Kristina Juter
A project where physics teaching in upper-secondary is studied, through observations and interviews, to find the role of mathematics in physics learning. Mathematics is an inherent part of science theories and makes powerful predictions of natural phenomena from theoretical calculations possible. Students have been described to have their knowledge in science and mathematics fragmented, which means that they have difficulties in generalising, and in using theoretical knowledge in new contexts. The project is funded by the Swedish Research Council.

roBOTics and STEM education for children and primary schools - botSTEM, ERASMUS+

Marie Fridberg, Björn Cronquist and Andreas Redfors
An ERASMUS+ project aiming to raising the utilisation of inquiry-based collaborative earning and robots-enhanced education. BOTSTEM implements robot-based approaches, including  code-learning, for enhancing the education in Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM). The project outputs are specifically aimed to provide in- and pre-service teachers in Childhood and Primary Education, children aged between 4 and 8, with research-based materials and best practices. 

Chemistry and Physics in Preschool - Teaching and Learning Related to Sustainability and Socio-Scientific Issues, FpLiS

Marie Fridberg, Susanne Thulin and Andreas Redfors
This project, together with preschools in Kristianstad, studies model-based teaching and collaborative inquiry learning of chemical processes and physical phenomena related to socio-scientific issues (SSI). A special focus is children's learning in connection to intended and enacted teaching, and the research contrasts teaching and learning processes with and without scaffolding by contemporary information technologies. Furthermore, is the above contrasted to teachers' knowledge of explanatory models in science and didactic.

Physics and Communication in preschool

Lina Hellberg, Andreas Redfors and Susanne Thulin
The project investigates the communication between children and teachers during work work everyday phenomena related to explanatory models in physics. The teachers' planning of the intended and the enacted object of learning are investigated. The empirical data is from a preschool and a team of teachers working with the youngest children (ages 1-2 years).

On student pre-school teachers and views of Science

Andreas Redfors and Susanne Thulin
This project studies student pre-school teachers' views of Science and the role they see of science in pre-school activities. The project uses a pre-post survey based methodology investigating the impact of a semester (half-year) course embedding science, particularly Chemistry and Physics phenomena.

HR-diagrams in Astronomy Education

Urban Eriksson, Andreas Redfors and Maria Rosberg
This project studies the awareness that experts (teachers) and novices (students) experience when engaging with disciplinary representations like HR-diagrams.

Supervisor

Lina Hellberg
Physics and communication in preschool

Examples of former projects

Teachers' Views of Nature of Science and the Teaching of Nature of Science in Grades 4-9
Lotta Leden, Lena Hansson and Andreas Redfors with Malin Ideland MaH
How is scientific knowledge developed? How do scientists work? How do science and society interact? These are some examples of questions that could be included in discussions about "nature of science" (NOS). The inclusion of NOS in science education has for a long time been regarded as an important component in the science classroom. This study investigates teachers' views of the teaching about NOS in compulsory school. Two groups of teachers are studied during three years both during their teaching and during focus-group discussions. During the focus-group meetings both different aspects of NOS and the teaching of NOS is discussed.

Watching the sky – new realizations, meanings and aspects in university level astronomy

Urban Eriksson and Andreas Redfors
This project studies, in cooperation with Cedric Linder and John Airey at Uppsala University, the meanings that students construct from the disciplinary representations used to get a holistic understanding of the basic building-blocks of the universe and how they functionally work together. The study explores the awareness that experts (teachers) and novices (students) experience when engaging with the disciplinary representations e.g. simulation videos illustrating the structural components and characteristics of the Milky Way Galaxy or HR-diagrams.

CoReflect - a finalised EU-project
Andreas Redfors, Lena Hansson och Maria Rosberg

In this project we were, together with groups in six other countries developing, implementing and evaluating digital learning environments focusing different socio-scientific issues. The Swedish group at HKr designed a learning environment in the area of astrobiology. The socio-scientific issues were: Should we search for, and try to contact extraterrestrial life? and Should we transform Mars into a planet where we could live in the future? We are, from different perspectives, analysing students' argumentation concerning these issues in the end of the teaching sequence, and during their group work with the learning environment.

Preliminarie results have been presented NFUN-08, ESERA-09, NFPF-10, IOSTE-10, GIREP-10, ESERA-11, NFPF-12. See also Publications

Teacher students' ontological views on the world of models in physics

Andreas Redfors, Ingemar Holgersson, Kristianstad University and Hans Niedderer, University of Bremen

A project to investigate teacher students' ontological views of models in natural sciences, especially physics. We are also interested in how the students make links between the world of models/theories and the world of objects and events, and how models are used in explanations of phenomena. The project methodology is a combination of cross sectional and longitudinal design. We have investigated all the different teacher students in a cross-sectional design, but we are also following the group who was in their first year longitudinally. Written questionaires in combination with interviews are used. We share Giere's (1997) and others view on the links between the world of science models and the world of objects and events. The subject matter focus is within matter and transformation of matter, also how matter and electromagnetic radiation interact.

Giere, R. N. (1997) Understanding Scientific Reasoning 4:th ed. Harcourt Brace College Publisher.

Working papers on this project were presented at "ESERA 2003, Fourth International Conference of the European Science Education Research Association E.S.E.R.A." August 19 - 23, 2003, Utrecht, The Netherlands, at "EARLI Improving Learning, Fostering the Will to Learn, 10th Biennial Conference, Padova, Italy - August 26 - 30, 2003, and at the "Fifth International Conference of the European Science Education Research Association E.S.E.R.A. Aug 28 – Sep 1, 2005, Barcelona, Spain.

Final report of the project (PDF-document, 175 kB)(pdf, 174 kB) presented at "NARST" - Annual Meeting 2006, April 3-6, 2006, San Francisco, USA.

Project based Astrophysics with Role Playing

Andreas Redfors Kristianstad University

A teaching sequence in astrophysics for future science teachers that incorporates both explicit discussions of the nature of scientific models and the role of these models in explanations has been developed and tested. The goal was to promote meaningful learning in Physics, e.g. Viennot (2001). Meaningful learning is interpreted as reaching an understanding of physics based on an ability to distinguish between the world of models and the real world, and an awareness of the limitations and usefulness of models.

We believe that students should be given the opportunity to discuss and work with different models for one specific phenomenon, hence varying the perspective of the object of learning (Marton, Runesson & Tsui 2004). We also believe that learners do not substitute old mental models with new ones, but accumulates them (Kärrqvist 1985; Thornton 1995; Taber 1998; Redfors & Ryder 2001).

There were aspects of contrastive teaching (Schecker & Niedderer 1996) – the lectures were combined with lab and project work, in groups. During the lectures the students formed groups in the class room, thus enhancing discussions (Mazur 1997).

A semi-structured role-play (Ödegaard 2003) was used to report on the project. The students impersonated different experts, with different perspective of the phenomenon. The students expanded on the descriptions of the roles in their own way in their group work, thus adding theoretical perspectives of the phenomenon at hand – stellar birth, life and death.

Kärrqvist, C. (1985). Kunskapsutveckling genom experimentcentrerade dialoger i ellära. Göteborgs Universitet, Göteborg.
Marton, F., Runesson, U. & Tsui, A. B. M. (2004). The space of learning. In:
Marton, F. & Tsui, A. B. M. (Eds), Classroom discourse and space of learning (pp 1-72). N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Masur, E. (1997) Peer Instruction. Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice Hall.
Redfors, A. & Ryder, J. (2001). University physics students' use of models in explanations of phenomena involving interaction between metals and radiation. International Journal of Science Education, 23, 1283-1301.
Schecker, H. and Niedderer, H. (1996), Contrastive teaching: A strategy to promote qualitative conceptual understanding of science. In Treagust, D. F. , Duit, R. , Fraser, B. J (Eds): Improving teaching and learning in science and mathematics, Teachers College Press, New York.
Taber, K. S. (1998). An alternative conceptual framework from chemical education. International Journal of Science Education, 20(5), 597-608.
Thornton, R. (1995). Conceptual dynamics -- Changing student views of Force and Motion. In Bernardini, C., Tarsitani, C. and Vicentini, M. (Eds.), Thinking physics for teaching (pp 157-183). New York: Plenum Press.
Viennot, L. (2001). Reasoning in Physics. The part of common sense. Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Ödegaard, M. (2003) Dramatic Science. A Critical Review of Drama in Science Education. Studies in Science Education 39 75-1001.

Paper presented at "GIREP 2006 (PDF-document, 103 kB)(pdf, 102 kB) – Modeling in Physics and Physics Education, August 20 – 25, 2006, Amsterdam, NL.

Learning pathways for individual students in the area of electricity

Andreas Redfors Kristianstad University and Hans Niedderer, University of Bremen

Learning processes of three college students (prospective elementary school teachers) in the content area of electric circuits were investigated in a tutorial study. Empirical evidence for cognitive development is coming from an interpretive analysis of transcripts of six tutorial sessions, in which the students use hands-on experiments and special computer software. Data from 1991 are re-analysed with respect to a theoretical model of cognitive development assuming the use of cognitive layers, both during the learning process and at its end. We believe that the empirical data can be explained by assuming that the state of the learner's cognitive system at any time is an association of co-existing models, i.e. that there are different layers of the cognitive system.

A working paper presented at "The Third International Conference of the European Science Education Research Association, E.S.E.R.A." August 21 - 25, 2001, Thessaloniki, Greece. Submitted to proceedings.

Paper presented at "ASERA 2002 (PDF-document, 187 kB)(pdf, 186 kB), 33:rd Annual Conference of the Australasian Science Education Research Association" July 11 - 14, 2002, Townsville, Queensland.

STEDE - Initial teacher education : A survey of preparation for teaching science (secondary)
Laurence Simonneaux, Virginie Albe, Jean-Louis Hemptinne, Alexandra Magro Ecole Nationale de Formation Agronomique, France, Helmut Fischler Free University of Berlin, Germany, Andreas Redfors, Olle Eskilsson Kristianstad University, Sweden, Marine Meheut Université Denis Diderot- Paris 7, France, Peter Buck University of Education Heidelberg, Germany, Lidia Borghi University of Pavia, Italy.

STEDE is a European project consisting of several different "micro-networks" and this is one of them (micro-network 6b).

The focus for the STEDE thematic network is to develop the effective use of curriculum and didactic research and development in the development of teachers of science and technology, particularly with respect to education for scientific literacy.

In actuality, the STEDE network has been working since January 2001. During the process of building the STEDE network, members belonging to different micronetworks are

• comparing and contrasting the structure and function of science teacher education across Europe
• surveying how science teacher education programmes prepare teachers to teach scientific literacy
• surveying how teacher education programmes prepare people to teach science in the primary and secondary phases (micronetworks 5 and 6)
• surveying how distance learning technologies can facilitate the initial and inservice training of science teachers, especially in the field of integrating ICT in their classroom teaching.

The study focuses on how results from science education research contribute to science teacher education. The methodology is to analyse students' final theses with respect to occurance of results from science education research.

A rapport was presented at the Third International Conference of the European Science Education Research Association, E.S.E.R.A." Augusti 21 - 25, 2001, Thessaloniki, Grekland.

Paper presented at "ESERA 2003, (PDF-document, 320 kB)(pdf, 319 kB) Fourth International Conference of the European Science Education Research Association E.S.E.R.A." August 19 - 23, 2003, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

University physics students' explanations of phenomena involving interaction between matter and radiation

Andreas Redfors, Kristianstad University och Jim Ryder, University of Leeds

We examine third year university physics students' use of models when explaining phenomena involving interaction between matter and electromagnetic radiation. This is a content area in which explanations draw upon a number of different models. University physics students are familiar with the phenomena, but the explanations of these phenomena are not generally used as exemplars of scientific models within undergraduate physics education. The student sample is drawn from six universities in UK and Sweden. Our analysis shows that these students have difficulties in providing appropriate explanations for the phenomena. Many students draw upon the Bohr model of isolated atoms when explaining light emission of metals. The students tend not to recognise that atoms in metals will interact to give an electronic structure very different from that of the "exemplar" system of an isolated atom. A large proportion of students are shown to be context dependent in their use of models, i.e. they use different explanatory models where a physicist would not.

The research questions this study is designed to address are:

• What scientific models do students draw upon in their explanations of phenomena involving the interaction of radiation and matter?
• Do students draw upon scientific models in an appropriate way in their explanations of these phenomena? (by "appropriate" we mean "at a level which could be expected of these university physics students")
• When presented with a series of phenomena which could be explained appropriately using a single model, do students draw upon a single model in their explanations, i.e. do students use models consistently in their explanations of a number of related phenomena?

Selected references
Giere, R. N. (1988) Explaining Science. A cognitive approach. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Gilbert, J. K., Boulter, C. and Rutherford, M. (1998) Models in explanations: Part I, Horses for courses? International Journal of Science Education, 20, 83-97.
Linder, C. J. (1993) University physics students' conceptualizations of factors affecting the speed of sound propagation. Int. J. Sci Edu 15, 655-662.
Prosser, M. (1994) A phenomenographic study of students' intuitive and conceptual understanding of certain electrical phenomena. Instructional Science 22, 189-205.

Presented at "The Second International Conference of the European Science Education Research Association, E.S.E.R.A." August 31 - September 4, 1999, Kiel, Germany.

Presented other aspects focused on sunlight at "GIREP International Conference - Physics Teacher Education beyond 2000. August 27 to September 1, 2000, Barcelona, Spain. Article in the proceedings of PHYTEB 2000 (PDF-document, 136 kB).(pdf, 136 kB)

Also in Selected Contributions R. Pints & S. Suriqach (eds). Elsevier Editions.
ISBN. 2-84299-312-8 Paris. 2001.

Redfors, A. and Ryder*, J.: University physics students' use of models in explanations of phenomena involving interaction between metals and radiation. International Journal of Science Education 23, 1283 (2001).

Presented another part of the project, focused on colour, at GIREP International Conference - Physics in new fields and modern applications - opportunities for physics education. August 5 - 9, 2002, Lund, Sweden. Articles in the proceedings. (PDF-document, 179 kB)(pdf, 179 kB)

A longitudinal study of conceptual change in physics during a one year upper secondary science course and during a science teacher education program
Andreas Redfors, Kristianstad University

The project study of the change in understanding of students that take a one year compact course in upper secondary science and then continue with a science teacher education for elementary school. They need the science course in order to be allowed to follow the science teacher education program. In addition, they get a guaranteed place in the teacher education program when starting the compact science course.

We adopted a methodology (Vosniadou 1994) that consists of asking many questions of generative nature about the concept in question. A generative question does not prompt a "text book answer" instead it requires the student to reflect and construct the answer. We have used paper and pencil questionnaires and clinical interviews.

The study was started by a paper and pencil questionnaire. All the students in the group got the same questionnaire. We wanted to map the students presuppositions about several physics concepts, such as matter, energy, heat, light and atoms. The pre-instructional questionnaire was followed up by interviews of seven in the group of 30 students. At the end of the course the students were given the same questionnaire as a post test.

The findings of the first part of our study, i.e. the presuppositions of physics concepts and the following conceptual change of the students during this one year science course was presented at "The First International Conference of the European Science Education Research Association, E.S.E.R.A." in Rome 1997.

Vosniadou, Stella (1994). Learning and Instruction 4, 45-69.

Supervisor - completed

Ingrid Lundh
Teaching Science through Inquiry – Professional Development of In-Service-Teachers

Lotta Leden
Teachers' Views of Nature of Science and the Teaching of Nature of Science in Grades 4-9

Urban Eriksson
Watching the sky - realizations, meanings and aspects in introductory astronomy

Pernilla Granklint Enochson - PhD
About the organ systems and their function - analyses of students' answers in Sweden and South Africa.

Lena Hansson - PhD
Swedish upper-secondary school students' worldviews - taking a starting point in their views of the universe.

Ann-Charlotte Lindner - Licentiat
The development of students' understanding of physical phenomena.

Other projects within the research group LISMA