Preservice Physics Teachers’ Conceptual Profile of Time

Abstract

Time is a concept of historical, social, cultural, philosophical, artistic, economic, technological, scientific relevance. Time assumes different meanings in the Sciences, especially in Physics, acquiring fundamental importance in different physical contexts. However, in both high school and college Physics courses in Brazil, time is usually treated as an abstract mathematical parameter to the detriment of recognizing its different meanings, domains of validity, and historicity concerning its genesis. Such treatment of the concept of time leads us to believe that these more particular notions would probably be present in the conceptions within the complex conceptual profile of future Physics teachers in training. We interviewed preservice physics teachers to investigate this hypothesis in physics teacher education. To categorize students’ conceptual profile zones, we developed the Concept Polysemy Organization Matrix (POM) based on the dimensions of the complex conceptual profile model and the genetic scales of Vygotsky. As a result, we start to structure future Physics teachers’ conceptual profile of time, identifying a myriad of meanings of time through POM. Beyond that, we verified that future physics teachers’ dominant meaning of time is numerical since their main formation activity in physics teacher education reinforces abstract mathematical-physical problem-solving.