
Maija NousiainenUniversity of Helsinki | HY · Department of Physics
Maija Nousiainen
Doctor of Philosophy
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40
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Introduction
Additional affiliations
January 2013 - January 2018
August 2008 - December 2012
Publications
Publications (40)
Quantum optics, information and quantum technologies are today becoming increasingly important within European educational initiatives. Many recent roadmaps emphasize the urgency to include these topics as part of teacher education as well as part of secondary education. In Finland we also face the pressure to modernize the secondary level teaching...
Constructing a clear and coherent scientific argument is a non-trivial task. There is an argument to be made that in the modern day, using computational essays and similar media that require reproducible programming as a platform for delivering one’s ideas could foster development of good scientific communication practices in a disciplinarily authe...
This edited collection contains publications based on presentations given at the NOFA 9 conference on May 9 to 11, 2023, at Åbo Akademi University in Vaasa, Finland. The conference theme this year was Education, knowledge and Bildung in a global world.
This edited collection contains publications based on presentations given at the NOFA 9 conference on May 9 to 11, 2023, at Åbo Akademi University in Vaasa, Finland. The conference theme this year was Education, knowledge and Bildung in a global world.
The book is published online here: https://edition.fi/ainedidaktinen-tutkimusseura/catalog/book/...
We analyze here how pre-service teachers explicate their views about the wave-particle duality of photons and what role it plays in their arguments supporting the quantum nature of light. The data for the analysis is provided by 12 written reports about the double-slit experiment with feeble light. The analysis is based on constructing semantic net...
We discuss here how domain-specific argumentation and skills related to it can form part of learning science in higher education. In this study, we analyse pre-service physics teachers written reports (N=36). We introduce here four argumentative elements and propose how they can be used to analyse physics knowledge argumentation. The analysis allow...
Teaching and learning the language of science is an important part of science education. Learning the vocabulary of science plays a key role in learning the language of science. The meaning of abstract scientific terms builds on their connections with other terms and how they are used. In this research, we study pre-service physics teachers’ physic...
A simple method to construct lexical networks (lexicons) of how students use scientific terms in written texts is introduced. The method is based on a recently introduced quantum semantics generalization of a word-pair co-occurrence. Quantum semantics allows entangled co-occurrence, thus allowing to model the effect of subjective bias on weighting...
Argumentointi on tunnistettu tärkeäksi koulutuksen tavoitteeksi, minkä vuoksi sitä on painotettu luonnontieteiden opetuksessa. Painotus on avannut lupaavia mahdollisuuksia, mutta myös ongelmia, joiden ymmärtämiseksi tarkastelemme neljää argumentoinnin mallia. Tavoitteena on ymmärtää, millaisella mallilla voitaisiin kattavasti kuvata fysiikan tiedon...
The purpose of this study is to increase the understanding about undergraduate life science students’ conceptions concerning the role of photosynthesizing plants in the ecosystem, utilizing a network analysis method. Science learning requires the integration and linking of abstract and often counterintuitive concepts successfully into multifaceted...
Argumentation and knowledge justification have been noted as important skills to be learned in secondary
and tertiary level of education. These skills are especially crucial in teaching and learning physics
because physics knowledge is normative and has hierarchical structure. The purpose of this article is
two-fold. First, we propose a framewor...
Learning the wave-particle dualism of electrons and photons plays a central role in understanding quantum physics. Teaching it requires that the teacher is fluent in using abstract and uncommon terms. We inspect the lexical structures of pre-service teachers' declarative knowledge about the wave-particle dualism of electrons and photons in the cont...
The lexical structure of language of science as it appears in teaching and teaching materials plays a crucial role in learning the language of science. We inspect here the lexical structure of two texts, written for didactic purposes and discussing the topic of wave-particle dualism as it is addressed in science education. The texts are analyzed as...
Supporting teacher candidates' learning of coherent and well-ordered content knowledge is one of the most important educational aims in subject teacher education. To reach this aim, teacher educators need suitable tools to enhance the formation of such knowledge. In this article, we present an analytical framework to examine conceptual knowledge, m...
Relational interlinked dependencies between concepts constitute the structure of abstract knowledge and are crucial in learning conceptual knowledge and the meaning of concepts. To explore pre-service teachers’ declarative knowledge of physics concepts, we have analyzed concept networks, which agglomerate 12 pre-service teacher students’ representa...
Abstract Concept maps, which are network-like visualisations of the inter-linkages between concepts, are used in teaching and learning as representations of students’ understanding of conceptual knowledge and its relational structure. In science education, research on the uses of concept maps has focused much attention on finding methods to identif...
Discourse patterns in a small group are assumed to form largely through the group’s internal social dynamics when group members compete for floor in discourse. Here we approach such discourse pattern formation through the agent-based model (ABM). In the ABM introduced here the agents’ interactions and participation in discussions are dependent on t...
Concept maps are used in teaching and learning as representations of students’ understanding of conceptual knowledge. Concept maps are basically networks of interlinked web of concepts. A long-standing problem in educational research is identifying the key concepts of importance in such networks. Here we use network analysis to examine students’ re...
Learning scientific knowledge is largely based on understanding what are its key concepts and how they are related. The relational structure of concepts also affects how concepts are introduced in teaching scientific knowledge. We model here how students organise their knowledge when they represent their understanding of how physics concepts are re...
We discuss here conceptual change and the formation of robust learning outcomes from the viewpoint of complex dynamic systems (CDS). The CDS view considers students’ conceptions as context dependent and multifaceted structures which depend on the context of their application. In the CDS view the conceptual patterns (i.e. intuitive conceptions here)...
We present a computational model of sociocognitive aspects of learning. The model takes into account a student’s individual cognition and sociodynamics of learning. We describe cognitive aspects of learning as foraging for explanations in the epistemic landscape, the structure (set by instructional design) of which guides the cognitive development...
PurposeIn small cooperative and collaborative groups, patterns of interaction, discourse and dialogue are often strongly bidirectional; ties are reciprocal and reciprocated. This reciprocation of ties leads to the formation of interaction patterns that are reciprocated dyads (two individuals connected reciprocally) and triads (three individuals con...
The process of learning scientific knowledge from the dynamic systems viewpoint is studied in terms probabilistic learning model (PLM), where learning accrues from foraging in the epistemic landscape. The PLM leads to the formation of attractor-type regions of preferred models in an epistemic landscape. The attractor-type states correspond to robus...
Helsingin yliopiston Fysiikan laitoksella annettava aineenopettajan koulutus keskittyy opettajien aineenhallinan syventämiseen ja se perustuu didaktisen fysiikan tutkimukseen. Didaktinen fysiikka puolestaan on fysiikkaan kuuluva tutkimuksen ja opetuksen ala, joka keskittyy fysiikan käsitteiden, käsiterakenteiden ja niiden kehittymiseen liittyvien p...
The desired outcome of learning science is students’ expert-like subject knowledge, which is expected to be at the same time well-organized, coherent and contingent. However, it has proved difficult to find ways to represent these features and to identify the key conceptual elements or concepts that are responsible for them. In this study concept n...
Students' understanding of scientific conceptual knowledge is often represented as an interlinked web of concepts, principles,
laws and models. A long-standing problem in educational research is identifying the key concepts that are central in producing
cohesion and contingency in such a web. Here we use network analysis to examine students' repres...
In the Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, there are advanced
physics courses designed for the needs of pre-service physics teachers.
The starting point is that after introductory and intermediate physics
courses, pre-service physics teachers know laws and definitions but the
knowledge is quite fragmented and does not form coherent whole...
Good conceptual understanding of physics is based on understanding what the key concepts are and how they are related. This kind of understanding is especially important for physics teachers in planning how and in what order to introduce concepts in teaching; connections which tie concepts to each other give direction of progress—there is “flux of...
In physics teacher education the use of graphical knowledge representation tools like concept maps are abundantly used because they are known to support the formation of organised knowledge. It is widely assumed that certain structural characteristics of concept maps can be connected to the usefulness of content. In order to study this relationship...
In physics teacher education, one of the recurrent themes is the importance of fostering the formation of organised and coherent knowledge structures, but a simple shared understanding of what coherence actually means and how it can be recognised, is not easily found. This study suggests an approach in which the coherence of students’ views about t...
Doctoral Dissertation, University of Helsinki, 2012
In this study, a parsimonious set of quantities is developed to characterise and evaluate the quality of concept maps. It is shown here how such a set can be based on measurements of the connectivity, clustering and cohesion of concept maps. A structural model of the data is introduced so that concept maps can be evaluated and classified by using o...
Conceptual understanding of physics is based on understanding what the key concepts are and how they are related. In learning and teaching connections which tie concepts to each other give direction of progress - there is a flux of information. We discuss here how such ordering of concepts can be made visible by using concept maps and how the maps...
Many assume that the quality of students' content knowledge can be connected to certain structural characteristics of concept maps, such as the clustering of concepts around other concepts, cyclical paths between concepts and the hierarchical ordering of concepts. In order to study this relationship, we examine concept maps in electricity and magne...
A characteristic feature of scientific knowledge is the high degree of coherence and connectedness of its conceptual structure.
This notion is also behind the widely accepted instructional method of representing the concepts as networks. We suggest here
that notions of explanatory coherence and deductive coherence naturally connect the structure of...
In physics education the use of graphical knowledge representation tools like concept maps has been one promising line of approach, which is known to support the formation of organised knowledge. There are several information technology (IT) solutions for concept mapping, which allow a flexible collaborative construction of concepts maps. However,...