Didactics of Physics-Chemistry - Concepts, Curriculum, and Resources

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the core concepts of didactics, curriculum, didactic transposition, didactic triangle, classroom contracts, obstacles, problem-situations, and didactic resources for Physics-Chemistry teaching preparation.

Pedagogy (Pédagogie)

The set of principles, methods, and practices mobilized to organize teaching and foster learning, focusing primarily on the teacher-learner relationship, classroom management, and general learning conditions.

Didactics (Didactique)

The study of the teaching and learning processes of knowledge specific to a given discipline, analyzing the teacher, the learner, the knowledge, and the interactions among these three poles.

Dominant Question of Pedagogy

"Comment organiser l’apprentissage ?" (How to organize learning?), dealing with class management, motivation, and teaching methods independently of a specific discipline.

Dominant Question of Didactics

"Comment faire construire un savoir déterminé ?" (How to guide the construction of a specific body of knowledge?), dealing with concepts, disciplinary knowledge, learner conceptions, and learning obstacles.

Didactics of Physics-Chemistry

The field that studies the conditions of teaching and learning of concepts, laws, models, methods, and reasoning specific to the physical and chemical sciences.

Scientific Modeling (Modélisation)

The process of moving from reality to a simplified, functional, and operational scientific representation in order to describe, explain, or predict phenomena.

Curriculum

A global and organized design of the education offered to a learner, specifying educational aims and values, competencies, contents, learning activities, teaching methods, study organization, and evaluation modalities.

Syllabus / Programme (Programme)

The organization of learning for a specific discipline at a given educational level, detailing units, themes, contents, progression, and pedagogical guidelines.

Textbook (Manuel scolaire)

A didactic resource used to implement part of the curriculum/syllabus, containing documents, activities, experiments, exercises, diagrams, and problem situations, but which is neither the curriculum nor the syllabus itself.

Prescribed Curriculum (Curriculum prescrit / officiel)

The official learning intentions, orientations, syllabi, standards, and texts planned and established by the educational institution as the reference.

Taught Curriculum (Curriculum enseigné / mis en oeuvre)

What is actually enacted and worked on by the teacher in the classroom, conditioned by available time, resources, learners' levels, and didactic choices.

Learned Curriculum (Curriculum appris / acquis)

What the learner has genuinely built, understood, and retained at the end of the learning process, which may differ from what was officially planned or taught.

Epistemological Determinant of Curriculum

A factor influencing curriculum design based on the nature of scientific knowledge and the authentic modes of scientific knowledge construction (questioning, observing, experimenting, modeling, and arguing).

Psychological Determinant of Curriculum

A factor influencing curriculum design based on learners' age, cognitive development, prior knowledge, and reasoning capabilities, ensuring appropriate formulation levels of scientific models.

Didactic Transposition (Transposition didactique)

The transformations that knowledge undergoes as it passes from its scientific production context into the school context, being selected, organized, reformulated, and adapted to become teachable.

Scholarly Knowledge (Savoir savant)

Knowledge produced, validated, and published by the scientific community and researchers in their respective academic fields.

Knowledge to be Taught (Savoir à enseigner)

Knowledge selected, organized, and legitimized by official institutions, curriculum developers, committees, and experts for inclusion in school curricula.

Taught Knowledge (Savoir enseigné)

Knowledge effectively presented and worked on in the classroom by the teacher and teaching team through choices of examples, formulation levels, situations, and activities.

Learned Knowledge (Savoir appris)

Knowledge effectively constructed, integrated, and retained by the learner as an outcome of learning.

External Transposition (Transposition externe)

The transition from scholarly knowledge to knowledge to be taught ($\text{savoir savant} \rightarrow \text{savoir à enseigner}$), driven by the noosphere, educational institutions, syllabus designers, and experts.

Internal Transposition (Transposition interne)

The transition from knowledge to be taught to taught knowledge ($\text{savoir à enseigner} \rightarrow \text{savoir enseigné}$), managed directly by the teacher and pedagogical team within the classroom.

Noosphere (Noosphère)

The sphere of thinking actors outside the classroom (educational institutions, syllabus designers, academic experts, societal representatives) who select and legitimize educational content.

Désyncrétisation (Desyncretization)

The operation of breaking down a complex, unified body of scientific knowledge into distinct, discrete, and teachable elements.

Décontextualisation (Decontextualization)

The operation of detaching scientific knowledge from the initial historical, experimental, and disciplinary context in which it was produced.

Dépersonnalisation (Depersonalization)

The operation of separating knowledge from the specific person, individual history, or idiosyncratic conditions of the scientists who discovered it.

Programmation (Curricular Sequencing)

The operation of arranging educational knowledge according to a logical, pedagogical, and temporal progression across levels and sequences.

Publication (Didactic Transposition)

The formalization, codification, and dissemination of knowledge within official guidelines, textbooks, and instructional teaching materials.

Contrôle social (Social Control of Knowledge)

Establishing school knowledge as an institutional and social reference that can be publicly monitored, evaluated, and examined.

Didactic Triangle (Triangle didactique)

A triangular model representing the three fundamental poles of any teaching-learning situation: Teacher (Enseignant), Learner (Apprenant), and Knowledge (Savoir).

Didactic Relation (Relation didactique)

The axis between Teacher and Knowledge (Enseignant ↔ Savoir), concerning the selection, organization, transposition, and presentation of scientific contents.

Learning Relation (Relation d'apprentissage)

The axis between Learner and Knowledge (Apprenant ↔ Savoir), focusing on how learners appropriate knowledge, their initial conceptions, obstacles, and knowledge construction.

Pedagogical Relation (Relation pédagogique)

The axis between Teacher and Learner (Enseignant ↔ Apprenant), encompassing classroom interactions, expectations, rules, assistance, and regulation.

Pedagogical Contract (Contrat pédagogique)

The set of explicit and shared rules, operational routines, and organizational habits governing classroom behavior, discipline, and cooperative work, independent of a specific discipline.

Didactic Contract (Contrat didactique)

The system of reciprocal expectations, rules, and responsibilities between teacher and learner specifically concerning the knowledge being taught, much of which remains implicit.

Topaze Effect (Effet Topaze)

A didactic contract dysfunction where the teacher takes on the essential intellectual difficulty of a task by giving excessive hints or prompting, practically giving the answer in the learner's place.

Jourdain Effect (Effet Jourdain)

A didactic contract dysfunction where the teacher mistakes a trivial behavior, commonplace remark, or unjustified correct answer from a student as genuine mastery of deep scientific knowledge.

Abusive Use of Analogy (Usage abusif de l'analogie)

A teaching pitfall where an explanatory comparison (e.g., electric current compared to flowing water) is pushed beyond its domain of validity without highlighting limits, generating false conceptions.

Initial Conceptions / Representations (Conceptions initiales)

Pre-existing ideas, models, and personal explanations held by learners regarding natural phenomena or concepts prior to instruction, stemming from daily experience, everyday language, or culture.

Didactic Obstacle (Obstacle)

A well-anchored, internally coherent way of thinking or cognitive structure that resists change and impedes the learner from accessing new, scientifically valid knowledge.

Epistemological Obstacle (Obstacle épistémologique)

An obstacle arising from historical, pre-scientific ways of thinking embedded in the development of scientific knowledge itself (e.g., believing that continuous force is necessary to maintain uniform motion).

Didactic Obstacle (type) (Obstacle didactique)

An obstacle generated by pedagogical choices, instructional simplifications, or classroom representations that students overgeneralize outside their valid context.

Cognitive Conflict (Conflit cognitif)

An internal intellectual contradiction experienced by an individual learner when experimental observations or empirical results contradict their initial predictions and beliefs.

Socio-cognitive Conflict (Conflit sociocognitif)

A confrontation between different learners presenting contrasting explanations or problem-solving strategies, requiring verbal argumentation to reconstruct a common, correct model.

Scientific Concept (Concept scientifique)

An intellectual mental construct that organizes, describes, and interprets a class of phenomena or objects sharing common invariant properties, not reducible to mere memorization of formulas.

Didactic Situation (Situation didactique)

A learning situation designed and organized by the teacher with an explicit, visible intention to teach a specific piece of knowledge to learners.

Non-didactic Situation (Situation non didactique)

An everyday or informal situation completely devoid of any organized instructional intention or didactic framework, where learning may occur incidentally.

A-didactic Situation (Situation a-didactique)

A specific phase within a didactic situation where the teacher's intention to teach is masked from the learner, placing the learner in autonomous interaction with a problem-environment to make decisions and validate strategies.

Devolution (Dévolution)

The didactic process whereby the teacher guides the learner to accept intellectual responsibility for a problem or task, regarding it as their own problem rather than the teacher's.

Problem-Situation (Situation-problème)

A meaningful learning situation built around a core obstacle or problem that learners cannot solve immediately with available procedures, requiring them to search, mobilize resources, and build new knowledge.

Triggering Situation (Situation déclenchante)

A problem-situation placed at the very start of a sequence or unit designed to provoke questioning, destabilize initial conceptions, and create a genuine cognitive need to learn.

Structuring/Construction Situation (Situation de structuration / construction)

A problem-situation deployed during the active learning phase to construct, organize, formalize, and stabilize new concepts, relations, and scientific methods.

Integration Situation (Situation d'intégration)

A complex problem-situation deployed after multiple resources have been acquired, requiring learners to combine, mobilize, and coordinate several competencies to resolve an authentic challenge.

Consigne (Prompt / Instruction)

A clear, concise, complete, and level-adapted directive specifying the exact cognitive task that the learner is asked to perform in an activity (e.g., determine, justify, compare, deduce).

Didactic Resource (Ressource didactique)

Any tool, material, document, medium, or human support mobilized to facilitate teaching and learning, whose educational value depends entirely on how it is pedagogically integrated.

TICE (ICT in Education)

Technologies de l'Information et de la Communication pour l'Enseignement; the pedagogical integration of digital information and communication technologies into teaching and learning practices.

Digital Animation (Animation numérique)

A dynamic, predetermined visual sequence primarily designed to illustrate and visualize a phenomenon, where learner interaction is generally limited to play, pause, or rewind without parameter modification.

Digital Simulation (Simulation numérique)

An interactive digital representation based on an underlying mathematical or scientific model that allows the user to manipulate parameters and observe the calculated responses of the system.

ExAO (Expérimentation Assistée par Ordinateur)

Computer-Assisted Experimentation: a system coupling a real physical or chemical experimental setup with sensors, an acquisition interface, and computer software to measure, record, and process real data.

Scientific Model (Modèle scientifique)

A simplified, purposeful mental, physical, or mathematical representation of an object, system, or phenomenon designed to describe, explain, predict behaviors, and communicate within a specific validity domain.