Learning evaluation of interference and diffraction of light in physics laboratory

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an investigation referred to the learning of interference and diffraction of light in the context of a physic laboratory, through the application of a didactic proposal with students from an undergraduate course in physics. The design of the experimental activities has taken into account the difficulties reported by educational research, as well as the contribution of the Vergnaud conceptual fields theory, Ausubel meaningful learning theory and Vigotsky sociolinguistics theory. The research was focused in the study of students cognitive development during the implementation of the didactic proposal and the assessment of it through the skills development. A methodological qualitative approach was used, in an interpretative perspective, with a research-action design, where the researcher acts as a teacher while he collects the data. Researcher's field notes have been used in a complementarily, audio recordings of group interactions, video recordings of students’ teamwork, group reports about the individual activities and assessments. The results obtained from the analysis of the content of the registers and the interpretation from the theory of conceptual fields show an evolution in the students’ schemes. Their initials schemes, which were focused on ray optics, evolve to schemes focused on the wave model. The results obtained from the group reports and from the individual assessment show that all the students have managed to develop most skills raised as learning objectives in the didactic proposal.

Keywords

• laboratory
• wave optics
• didactic proposal
• learning
• Vergnaud schemes