ABSTRACT

This study explores benefits of studying two related subjects, mathematics and physics, in teacher education. German teacher students study two subjects as a major, which allows for investigating how the development of content knowledge in one subject, mathematics, benefits students’ content knowledge in the other subject, physics. The sample included teacher students from 12 major teacher education universities in Germany. Each of the N = 104 physics teacher students, whose second subject was mathematics, answered two tests assessing their content knowledge in (1) mathematics and (2) physics. Our results reveal an influence of taking mathematics as a second subject on students’ physics content knowledge. However, the effect size is only small. We found this influence increased over the course of study, indicating that the study of academic mathematics provided increasing opportunities to learn physics over the course of study. Even when controlling for general cognitive abilities, there remains substantial and significant effect of mathematics on physics content knowledge. Mathematical knowledge proves to be relevant in all physical subdomains except for optics and solid-state physics. Overall, the present study confirms benefits of studying physics when also studying mathematics, and thus a synergy effect in studying two subjects in scope of teacher education.

摘要

本研究探讨了在教师教育中学习数学和物理这两个相关学科的好处。德国教师学生学习两门学科作为一个专业，这允许调查一门学科（数学）的内容知识的发展如何有利于学生在另一门学科（物理）的内容知识。样本包括来自德国 12 所主要师范教育大学的师生。每个N= 104 名物理教师学生，他们的第二个科目是数学，他们回答了两个测试，评估他们在 (1) 数学和 (2) 物理方面的知识。我们的结果揭示了将数学作为第二科目对学生物理内容知识的影响。但是，效果大小只是很小。我们发现这种影响随着学习过程的增加而增加，表明学术数学的学习在学习过程中提供了越来越多的学习物理的机会。即使在控制一般认知能力的情况下，数学对物理内容知识仍然存在实质性和显着的影响。数学知识被证明与除光学和固态物理学之外的所有物理子领域相关。总体，