A conceptual map for soft condensed matter physics: a basic framework for multidisciplinary and cooperative learning

Abstract

The development of innovative teaching methods is an effective way to promote new science education standards, in view of a positive feedback of the student performance. Despite the teachers positive attitudes towards the application of innovative learning approaches, the rapid progress of science and technology in the last decades requests a renewed global approach and a synergistic organization of the educational contents for an efficient teaching of the scientific topics. Modern teaching programs request then an efficient approach which allows to clearly identify the role of each discipline within the complex organization of the novel scientific concepts. In recent years, the progress in soft condensed matter research was driven by modern methods in both the experimental techniques and the theoretical approaches. In this article, we propose a conceptual map for a multidisciplinary approach of the post-graduate programs in soft condensed matter physics, one of the most important field in modern science and technology scene. We highlight the conceptual interconnection and the synergistic relation between different sub-disciplines of the field. The proposed conceptual map may stimulate the exploration of new approaches for the integration of knowledge and skills both from the experimental and theoretical point of view. In this respect teachers can organize scientific curricula by organizing and representing knowledge conceptually, by developing a curriculum that integrates the different (experimental and theoretical) topics appropriately and by designing environments and tasks that support motivation and (interest-based) cooperative learning.