Magdalena Kersting

Magdalena Kersting
University of Copenhagen · Department of Science Education

PhD in Physics Education Research
My research sits at the intersection of science education, embodied cognition, and technology.

About

57
Publications
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Introduction
My research sits at the intersection of science education, embodied cognition, and technology, with a key emphasis on how embodied experiences shape scientific understanding. My research interests include technology-enhanced education, modern physics education, teacher education and instructional quality. My methodological expertise lies in the combination of design-based research and different types of video analyses, including multimodal interaction analysis and video observation manuals.

Publications

Publications (57)
Article
Full-text available
Recent years have seen a growing interest in modernizing school science curricula to reflect the discoveries in physics since 1900, especially with the recent broad recognition of the importance of quantum physics in the modern world. Much effort has been expended in the development of appropriate teaching instruments for teaching Einsteinian physi...
Article
Full-text available
There has been a growing realisation that school science curricula do not adequately reflect the revolutionary changes in our scientific understanding of the 20th century. This discrepancy between current school education and our modern scientific understanding has led to calls for the modernisation of the science curriculum. Although there have be...
Chapter
Full-text available
Vår forståelse av verden rundt oss endrer og utvider seg gjennom nye vitenskapelige oppdagelser. Ikke minst er det etablerte modeller som revideres i takt med vår økende innsikt. I denne artikkelen dykker vi ned i historien om gravitasjon-et spennende eksempel på hvordan Newtons og Einsteins forskjellige modeller for det samme fenomenet skapte nye...
Article
Full-text available
Over the past decades, languages and literacies have become a prominent focus in science education research and practice. While there is broad consensus on the central roles of disciplinary, representational, and cultural languages and their associated literacies in learning and teaching science, the field faces a critical moment. An ever-growing n...
Conference Paper
Empirical studies have shown that instructional approaches that build on embodied cognition perspectives can help improve k-12 STEM education; however, these studies often originate from different disciplinary traditions, draw on different understandings of embodiment, and focus on different aspects of the learning process. Consequently, we lack a...
Presentation
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This is a presentation on a work in progress literature review on how embodied cognition is being used in k-12 STEM education.
Conference Paper
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In science education research, there is a growing body of studies focusing on the role of embodied experiences and multiple representations in pupils’ learning. In this study, we present findings from a re-analysis of data using different theoretical and methodological approaches drawn from embodied cognition and social semiotics. Specifically, we...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The longstanding tradition in education, and particularly in STEM fields, to prioritize cognitive achievements while neglecting the embodiment of learners has led to a dichotomized view of the mind and body in educational practices (Almqvist & Quennerstedt, 2015; Alsop, 2011). This dichotomy is increasingly questioned by emerging insights from the...
Chapter
In recent years, the physics education community has embraced embodied cognition perspectives to further explore the role of metaphors in the teaching and learning of physics. While researchers seem to agree on the crucial cognitive value of metaphors that can aid scientific inquiry, their instructional potential in physics education is not yet ful...
Article
Full-text available
Modern physics is an exciting and rapidly progressing field, prompting significant shifts in how we teach physics across all educational levels. While there is broad agreement on the need to modernise physics education and support physics teachers in this transition, existing initiatives often remain scattered across different educational contexts....
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Science education research has a long tradition of examining the role of metaphors in teaching and learning science. However, much of the existing research has focused on verbal manifestations of metaphors, thereby failing to acknowledge aspects of metaphors that may occur in non-verbal representations. This study integrates perspectives from embod...
Article
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Virtual reality (VR) technologies have the potential to transform astronomy education practices profoundly: new forms of visual representations, perceptual engagement and embodied participation promise authentic learning experiences in formal and informal learning spaces. While a growing body of research studies the educational needs and opportunit...
Preprint
Full-text available
There has been a growing realisation that school science curricula do not adequately reflect the revolutionary changes in our scientific understanding of the 20th century. This discrepancy between current school education and our modern scientific understanding has led to calls for the modernisation of the science curriculum. Although there have be...
Preprint
Full-text available
Recent years have seen a growing interest in modernizing physics and science curricula around the world. While many science educators and curriculum developers design instructional resources to successfully introduce topics of Einsteinian physics to young learners, it is clear that successful curriculum development needs to rest on successful teach...
Article
Full-text available
A large body of research has studied the role and potential of inquiry to increase the quality of teaching in science education. While much of this existing research is based on international large-scale assessment studies, we still lack a clear understanding of the factors that influence the quality of inquiry-based science teaching in actual clas...
Article
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Bodily engagement with the material and sociocultural world is ubiquitous in doing and learning science. However, science education researchers have often tended to emphasize the disembodied and nonmaterial aspects of science learning, thereby overlooking the crucial role of the body in meaning-making processes. While in recent years we have seen a...
Article
Full-text available
Increasingly, topics of general relativity enter mainstream media and popular culture. In parallel, scientists and educators try to find suitable instructional approaches to teach these topics in schools. A recent opinion piece in this journal argued for the need for more quantitative and formal approaches in GR education at the secondary school le...
Article
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Have you ever heard of black holes? Black holes sound like objects from a science fiction story. These objects are dark, dense regions in the universe, and their gravitational pull is so strong that nothing can escape them—not even light! This is why black holes are so black: without light, we cannot see them. Physicists think that black holes are...
Book
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Hva kjennetegner naturfagundervisning med god kvalitet? God naturfagundervisning legger til rette for at elever får et personlig engasjement i temaer de vil utforske ved hjelp av naturvitenskapelige praksiser og tenkemåter. Naturfag på sitt beste kan engasjere elevene i praktiske problemstillinger i klasserommet med situasjoner som må løses her og...
Chapter
På hvilken måte kan nettbrett utvide muligheter for praktiske aktiviteter og utforskinger i naturfag? Hvordan kan en lærer skape et godt læringsmiljø og styrke elevenes handlekraft på digitale arenaer? I denne casen belyser vi undervisningsstrategier som skårer høyt på praktiske aktiviteter, datainnsamling, konsolidering, tidsbruk og atferd. Disse...
Chapter
Hvordan kan man løfte kvaliteten på utforskende undervisning i naturfag? Finnes det enkle grep for å forbedre utforskende naturfagundervisning eller få under- visningen til å bli utforskende? I dette kapitlet ønsker vi å svare på disse spørsmålene ved å sammenlikne de obser- verte undervisningspraksisene med lærernes erfaringer med og refleksjoner...
Chapter
Hvilken rolle spiller kreativitet og fantasi i naturfag? Hvordan tilrettelegger en lærer for bruk og utvikling av forestillingsevnen når elevene lager produkter i fellesskap? Hvordan skaper lærere et læringsmiljø der elevene får utvikle sin kreativitet uten å være redd for å feile? Denne casen drøfter muligheter for å fremme fantasi og kreativitet...
Article
Full-text available
Science deals with the world around us, and we understand, experience, and study this world through and with our bodies. While science educators have started to acknowledge the critical role of the body in science learning, approaches to conceptualising the body in science education vary greatly. Embodiment and embodied cognition serve as umbrella...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Science communication for action and engagement – a proposal developed by the participants of the International Summer School “Communicating Science” 2021 in Berlin. This document was developed in five days by 50 young researchers from 26 countries. It offers recommendations for the future of science communication. In seven working groups, the part...
Article
Full-text available
In recent years, the science education research community has become increasingly interested in the learning domain of Einsteinian physics (EP). While the literature has provided accounts of how EP education can impact secondary and undergraduate students' attitudes and engagement with physics, we still lack such research with younger students. Thi...
Article
Full-text available
Dark matter is one of the most intriguing scientific mysteries of our time and offers exciting instructional opportunities for physics education in high schools. The topic is likely to engage and motivate students in the classroom and allows addressing open questions of the Standard Model of particle physics. Although the empirical evidence of dark...
Article
Full-text available
Recently, the physics education community has taken a keen interest in modernising physics education. However, while topics in modern physics have great potential to engage students, these topics are abstract and hard-to-visualise. Therefore, many students hold mistaken pictures and misconceptions, which can impede learning. In this article, we exp...
Article
Full-text available
Virtual reality applications turn abstract concepts into experienceable phenomena and present exciting opportunities to transform science education and public outreach practices. While research has started to look into the affordances of virtual reality (VR) in the formal science education context, the potential of these technologies to enhance pub...
Preprint
Full-text available
Dark matter is one of the most intriguing scientific mysteries of our time and offers exciting instructional opportunities for physics education in high schools. The topic is likely to engage and motivate students in the classroom and allows addressing open questions of the Standard Model of particle physics. Although the empirical evidence of dark...
Preprint
Full-text available
Science educators have to move beyond traditional content-focused instruction to teach concepts of Einsteinian physics. This work presents a design-based research project that introduced general relativity (GR) to upper secondary school students in Norway. The educational approach invited students to explore the historical development and philosoph...
Chapter
Modern physics unfolds on the stage of four-dimensional spacetime. Grappling with century-old ideas of space and time, Albert Einstein revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos by merging space and time into a four-dimensional entity that takes an active role in shaping the laws of physics. While experiments have repeatedly confirmed Einstein’...
Thesis
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The field of physics education aims to accomplish both research and practical goals: physics educators move between the world of research and scholarship and the world of school and teacher practice. This thesis takes the general theory of relativity as a learning domain to present physics education research that has contributed to both worlds. The...
Article
Full-text available
In recent years, general relativity (GR) and gravitational-wave astronomy have emerged both as active fields of research and as popular topics in physics classrooms. Teachers can choose from an increasing number of modern instructional models to introduce students to relativistic ideas. However, the true potential of an instructional model can only...
Article
This study reports on a pilot program conducted by members of the international Einsteinian Physics Education Research (EPER) Collaboration that aims to pool and combine innovative learning approaches in Einsteinian Physics. The collaboration also aims to disseminate learning resources and research results across a range of countries. In this study...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Science educators around the world aim to inspire and educate the next generation of scientists by teaching students our best understanding of the universe. This workshop brings together perspectives from Australia and Norway on how to teach this modern understanding by combining scientific modeling with interactive digital and virtual reality envi...
Conference Paper
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One of the main challenges that science educators face is to develop teaching-learning sequences that both engage students and that convey the science content successfully as well. In particular new curriculum topics such as topics of modern physics pose challenges for teachers and educators because of a scarcity of teaching experience and learning...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Imagination plays a crucial role in science practice and education because science often deals with the unobservable. The aim of this work is to examine imaginative practices in the science classroom from a Wittgensteinian perspective to reconsider the meaning of concepts in science education. Concepts have a central role in science and science edu...
Article
Full-text available
In contrast to classical physics, general relativity (GR) interprets gravity as geometry. Objects follow geodesic curves in four-dimensional spacetime and curvature creates the illusion of a gravitational force. Despite the scientific relevance of this theory, educational research in the domain of GR is scarce. This study contributes to a growing b...
Presentation
Full-text available
As well as conveying an understanding of the subject, physics education provides students with opportunities to develop and practice a host of physics-related skills and to acquire graduate-level attributes and capabilities. However, there is a gap between the skills that physics education aims to provide and those skills that are acquired by the s...
Article
----- FULL ARTICLE HERE: https://rdcu.be/byw1j ----- This study contributes to our understanding of meaning making in CSCL environments by examining a specific aspect of collaborative problem solving in which students improvise, introduce, and make meaning with representations in disciplinary domains. These situations include the embodied and imagi...
Article
Though we live in a 4-dimensional universe, our minds and bodies are not particularly good at perceiving and depicting 4 dimensions. This study contributes to our understanding of collaboration with abstract concepts by examining particular activities where bodily and experiential understandings may conflict with the conceptual domain. Specifically...
Article
Full-text available
The first direct observation of gravitational waves in 2015 has led to an increased public interest in topics of general relativity (GR) and astronomy. Physics teachers and educators respond to this interest by introducing modern ideas of gravity and spacetime to high school students. Doing so, they face the challenge of finding suitable models tha...
Article
Full-text available
According to general relativity (GR), we live in a four-dimensional curved universe. Since the human mind cannot visualize those four dimensions, a popular analogy compares the universe to a two-dimensional rubber sheet distorted by massive objects. This analogy is often used when teaching GR to upper secondary and undergraduate physics students. H...
Article
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Because of its abstract nature, Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity is rarely present in school physics curricula. Although the educational community has started to investigate ways of bringing general relativity to classrooms, field-tested educational material is rare. Employing the model of educational reconstruction, we present a coll...
Poster
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Few scientific discoveries have had a bigger impact on our understanding of the Universe than general relativity (GR). Einstein’s revolutionary theory did not only herald a new scientific and technological age, but brought about a new heyday of the philosophy of space and time as well. Yet, despite its scientific, philosophical, and technological i...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Though we live in a four-dimensional universe, our minds and bodies are not particularly good at perceiving and depicting four dimensions. In this study, we use upper secondary physics classrooms studying Einstein's general theory of relativity as a setting to identify conceptual challenges and representational practices that arise when learners at...
Poster
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The physics curricula for middle and high schools around the world are strongly dominated by classical mechanics. To date, only few countries, like Norway, have incorporated modern subject matter that arose from the discoveries of twentieth century physics into their national curriculum. One out of five main topics in the Norwegian physics curricul...

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