Computational Modeling to Enhance Engineering Skills in Prospective Physics and Technology Teachers

Abstract

According to trends in science education research over the past decade, integrated STEM education can not only improve students' conceptual understanding, but also develop various skills in them, such as solving real-world problems by applying theoretical knowledge to everyday life, critical thinking, acquisition of engineering skills, computational thinking, etc.  These competences need to be acquired by prospective physics teachers during their preservice studies, as they will be called upon to manage teaching situations on the basis of these competences.

In this paper, we present the experience we have conducted with a group of students, prospective teachers of physics in secondary school, in their fourth year of studies at the École Normale Supérieure de Kouba in Algiers. Throughout the year, students followed a laboratory course in which they learned the fundamentals of computational modeling and applied them to study physical phenomena and systems engineering and determine their behavior in relation to different variables.

We developed a rubric to measure the engineering skills before and after the experience. The findings show an improvement in the mean scores of the students after the experiment which is statistically significant.