This article addresses physics teachers’ views about physics teaching in upper-secondary school. Their views have been investigated nationwide through a web-based questionnaire. The questionnaire has been developed based on several published instruments and is part of an ongoing project on the role of mathematics in physics teaching at upper-secondary school. The selected part of the results from the analysis of the questionnaire reported on here cross-correlate physics teachers’ views about aims of physics teaching with their view of physics classroom activities, and perceived hindrances in the teaching of physics. 379 teachers responded to the questionnaire (45% response rate). The result indicates that teachers with a high agreement with a Fundamental Physics curriculum emphasis regarded mathematics as a problem for physics teaching, whereas teachers with high agreement with the curriculum emphases Physics, Technology and Societyor Knowledge Development in Physics did not do so. This means that teachers with a main focus on fundamental theories and concepts believe that mathematics is a problem to a higher extent than teachers with main focus on the role of physics in society and applied aspects or physics knowledge development do.  Consequences for teaching and further research are discussed. 

A physics lecture and a mathematics lecture, by the same teacher and partly the same students, were studied at upper secondary school. Both lectures covered ordinary differential equations. The main aim of the present paper was to investigate the teacher’s different and similar ways to handle related mathematical content in the two school subjects. The findings show a structural use of mathematics with an analytical approach in mathematics and an applied approach in relation to formulas in physics. This study is part of a larger study about mathematics in physics education funded by the Swedish research council.

Students’ beliefs about division by zero and numbers on the number line were studied through explanations of the concepts in questionnaires and interviews during their teacher education to become primary school teachers in the years 4–6. The concepts were chosen for students’ proven cognitive challenges in coping with them, with the aim to add to the existing knowledge in terms of specific and general explanation types. General and specific parts of the students’ concept images were contradictory in several cases and the examples used for explaining were often based on other mathematical structures than the ones explained, e.g. 2/1 instead of 2/0 or a finite decimal recitation instead of an infinite one.

The aim of the study reported in this paper is to investigate how students understand continuity and differentiability during and after a calculus course. The students’ choices of representations, both claimed and acted, were also studied. The study is part of a larger study of four student groups taking a calculus course. 207 students answered a questionnaire during the course and of them, 11 were interviewed after the course (the ones in this paper). Answers in questionnaires and interviews were categorised and compared. All students who preferred formal theoretical representations, and only those students, were able to produce formal proofs. The students’ stated and acted preferencesof representations were quite coherent, with only a few inconsistencies.

This chapter discusses a framework for analysing the role of mathematics during physics lessons in upper-secondary school. It takes as a starting point that relations made during physics lessons between Reality, Theoretical models and Mathematics are of the outmost importance. The framework was developed to analyse the communication during physics lessons. It was developed during a pilot study exploring the role of mathematics for physics teaching and learning in upper-secondary school during different kinds of physics lessons (lectures, problem solving and labwork). In the overall project observations have been made in three physics classes (in total 7 lessons) led by one teacher. Here the developed analytical framework is described together with selected results from one class (3 lessons) showing how the framework could be used. This chapter describes and discusses the uses of the framework and shows how results on students and teachers usages of links between the three entities Reality, Theoretical models and Mathematics can be brought to the forefront in an analysis of complex physics teaching situations. And, how the framework can be used to analyse the different organisational forms: lectures, problem solving in groups and labwork.

Matematik är ett viktigt verktyg för fysiken och matematiken sägs varafysikens språk. Tidigare forskning visar dock att elever ägnar mycket tid åt matematisk formelmanipulation medan mindre tid och kraft läggs på att relatera fysikens teoretiska modeller och begrepp till verk- ligheten. Syftet med forskningsprojektet vi beskriver här, är att för- djupa vår förståelse av matematikens roll i fysikundervisningen gene- rellt. Vi studerar därför matematikens roll i såväl problemlösningssitu- ationer som lärarledda genomgångar och laborativa moment. Pro- jektet kommer att ge förutsättningar för en ökad förståelse av matema- tikens roll i olika typer av fysikundervisning och för att identifiera i vilka situationer som kommunikationen visar på att matematiken ut- gör hinder eller möjligheter för fysiklärandet. Genom att identifiera så- dana tillfällen öppnas också möjligheten att arbeta för att bryta oöns- kade och stimulera önskade kommunikationsmönster och förstå hur matematiken kan användas på ett konstruktivt sätt i fysikundervis- ningen. Slutsatserna från projektet kommer därför att kunna användas i lärarutbildning, lärarfortbildning och av läromedelsförfattare, liksom av fysiklärare som vill arbeta för att utveckla sin undervisning.

We outline a framework to study the use of mathematics in physics classrooms. The framework focuses on the relations made between Reality, Theoretical models and Mathematics. In this paper the analyses of one teacher and her 3rd year classes at secondary school are presented. The results show that phenomena in reality are often used as a short prelude to put focus on the relationship theoretical model and mathematics. Mathematics is generally used in an instrumental way to handle various formulas without further insight or discussion of the related models or their relation to reality. There is a lack of varied communication with a structural use of mathematics, i.e., mathematics used to support reasoning in relation to a theoretical model, highlighting the meaning of concepts and models in the studied classrooms. 

This article discusses the role of mathematics during physics lessons in upper-secondary school. Mathematics is an inherent part of theoretical models in physics and makes powerful predictions of natural phenomena possible. Ability to use both theoretical models and mathematics is central in physics. This paper takes as a starting point that the relations made during physics lessons between the three entities Reality, Theoretical models and Mathematics are of the outmost importance. A framework has been developed to sustain analyses of the communication during physics lessons. The study described in this article has explored the role of mathematics for physics teaching and learning in upper-secondary school during different kinds of physics lessons (lectures, problem solving and labwork). Observations are from three physics classes (in total 7 lessons) led by one teacher. The developed analytical framework is described together with results from the analysis of the 7 lessons. The results show that there are some relations made by students and teacher between theoretical models and reality, but the bulk of the discussion in the classroom is concerning the relation between theoretical models and mathematics. The results reported on here indicate that this also holds true for all the investigated organisational forms lectures, problem solving in groups and labwork.