![Sample our Education journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5932/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Education.jpg"})
Abstract
The issue of students’ engagement in learning physics has generally been analysed in science education research using attitudes towards science, or motivation to learn science. However, the corresponding studies have their limitations. Therefore, the object of this paper is to present and to analyse an alternative to these theoretical approaches; namely the “relation to knowledge”, which has been used more and more in the past 10 years in French‐speaking educational research. The description and discussion of the broad outlines of this theory, of the associated methodology, and of the obtained results regarding the learning of physics will show the significance of this approach and its limits, as well as the perspectives that it opens
Acknowledgement
Many thanks to Karen Holland for her help and advice on the English version of this article.
Notes
1. Charlot uses in French, instead of “engagement”, the word “mobilization”, which has no equivalent in English. He wants to emphasize the fact that the student “moves himself” to study.
2. The widest study I know (Catsambis, Citation1995), concerns 24,500 students.
3. The theory of relation to knowledge has been developed at the University Vincennes Saint Denis Paris 8, within the research team ESCOL whose main participants are Bernard Charlot, Elizabeth Bautier, and Jean‐Yves Rochex.
4. A student’s personal analysis of what is important for him/her in all his/her knowledge.
5. We get an ideal‐type emphasizing unilaterally one or several points of view and connecting a lot of phenomena separately given, diffused and discreet, that we find now in a great number, now in a little number, and in places, not at all, that we organise according to different points of view, unilaterally chosen, to make a homogeneous picture of thoughts. We will find nowhere such a picture in its conceptual purity: it is a utopia. (Charlot et al., Citation1992, p. 41, quoting Weber, Citation1965).
6. The “bilan de savoir” gives information about the relation to knowledge at a particular moment. To study its evolution, it is necessary to make several successive “bilans”.
7. In the French educational system, physics is a compulsory discipline from 12 to 15 years old.
8. Dividing the sample population into seven or more classes seems to be open to criticism, given the fact that the pupils’ answers were not very developed.
9. One of the obtained classes comprised only eight students. Thus, one of the others had more than 150 students. The relation to physics knowledge that could be associated to these groups was too general.
10. This information is given as an indication, because the population sample has not been chosen to be statistically representative of the whole of the students following this level of studies.
11. The real students are more or less close to one of the previous ideal‐types, to which they can be associated.
12. When students choose to study scientific subjects, they have above all to learn mathematics, biology, and physical science (chemistry and physics). The study shows that there are only very few students who are truly engaged in learning physics science, even when disciplines are important for the average.
13. The word “phenomena” is used here according to Charlot’s meaning, as was explained previously.
14. He/she gives importance to physics, but not to physics knowledge; even when he/she gives a degree of importance to knowledge, this does not lead to effective and durably steady learning.
15. These students were enrolled on a course leading to the competitive entrance examination to be physics and chemistry teachers.
