The purpose with this thesis is to see which subject-specific concepts occur in middle school physics textbooks in the solar system. The second goal of the work is to analyze how these subject-specific concepts are explained to give an understanding of the concepts. This empirical work attempts to answer two questions:• What subject-specific concepts are found about the solar system in middle school physics textbooks?• How are the subject-specific concepts of the solar system explained so that they provide an understanding of the concepts?To answer these questions, a quantitative content analysis and a qualitative text analysis were made. The methods were applied to three different Swedish middle school textbooks. The theoretical framework used in this work is subject-specific concepts, analogies, metaphors and conceptual development. Subject-specific concepts are used to define the subject-specific concepts. Analogies and metaphors are used as a pair of glasses to show how students can acquire new concepts. The theory of conceptual development was used to gain perspective on how students understand new concepts. What I found out was that the subject-specific concepts used to explain our solar system were sun, moon, planet, earth, asteroid, earth axis, solar system, celestial bodies, gravity, attraction, dwarf planets, comets and crater. The result showed that none of the textbooks used analogies. A few metaphors were used but the explanations that appeared as the most except for no use were examples and relationships. In two textbooks some subject-specific concepts had been introduced earlier several times.Keywords: Physics, textbook, explained, solar system.Nyckelord: Fysik, lärobok, förklaringar, solsystemet.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:sh-35445 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Svensson, Melina |
| Publisher | Södertörns högskola, Lärarutbildningen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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