A literature review about computational modeling and simulation in physics education in middle and high school levels

This paper presents a literature review covering the central epistemological, psychopedagogical and didactical framework on researches about Computational Modeling and Simulation (CMS) activities in physics education (Middle and High School levels). The main search was performed in the following databases: Science Direct, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar considering articles published between 2003-2013 and looking for the following keywords: “computational modeling”; “computational simulation”; physics teaching”; “research in physics teaching”. (Also the corresponding keywords in Spanish and Portuguese were used in the search). After reading the selected articles, we kept only those implementations of CMS aiming to contribute to the learning of physics concepts. The results show that: i) the investigations are based on contemporary epistemological ideas, except one paper with positivist conceptions; ii) there are various cognitivist theory being used (Piaget, Ausubel, Vergnaud,…), but Vygostky is the most prominent; iii) strategies that promote social interactions are preponderant in activities of problem solving, simulations integrated with experiments and modeling. In fact, only two (2) studies among the 21 found about CMS at Midle and Hich School make use of Computational Modeling, showing that it is necessary some effort to introduce and investigate these kind of activity in physics education. Nonetheless, we identify a tendency to apply a mostly pedagogical and didactical basis towards the implementation of CMS activities within the classroom.

Keywords:
physics education; Computational Modeling and Simulation; conception of science; pedagogical and didactical basis