The role of the text in the interdisciplinarity between mathematics, physics and language education: the theme of parabolic motion between historical texts and physics textbooks for secondary school

Abstract

Starting from the case of parabolic motion, this contribution proposes a comparison and analysis of a historical text, some high school physics textbooks and one university textbook, from mathematical, physical, and linguistic points of view. The analysis shows how school textbooks, marked by disciplinary autonomy, have lost the intrinsic interdisciplinary dimension of historical texts. The university textbook is a synthesis of and a compromise between these divergent approaches. The results of the analysis represent a first starting point for the planning of targeted educational interventions and an important step to achieve interdisciplinarity in the school context between language education and science subjects.

Keywords

• interdisciplinarity
• language of mathematics
• language of phisics
• reading literacy
• textbook analysis
• text linguistics
• upper-secondary school
• hight education