METHODOLOGICAL CONCEPTS OF THE ELECTRODYNAMICSSECTION OF PHYSICS TEXTBOOK FOR THE PROFESSION-ORIENTED LEVEL

Abstract

The need to study the principles of the selection and the design of educational material of the school physics course that would have formed the basis of an integrated system of methodological development of pupils’ knowledge and skills has been constantly underscored by the scholars, methodologists, and teachers. After the adoption of the new state standard of basic and secondary education based on the principles of competence-, activity-based and personality oriented approaches, the problem of methodological knowledge and skills of the specialized classes acquires new features. Nowadays methodological knowledge and skills can be seen as combining elements of subject as well as natural and scientific (as a key) competence of pupils. Taking into consideration the fact that the main tool that implements the content and the structure of a school physics course was and remains to be a textbook, and it plays a specific role in the formation of the key and core competencies, we find that there is an urgent need to present a system of methodological issues in the textbook, especially for the high school of the profession-oriented level. In the article, the basic methodological issues of the section “Electrodynamics” (physical theories, values, concepts, fundamental experiments, models) and such elements of the methodological knowledge and skills as abstraction, idealization, analogy, modeling, and mental experiment are analyzed. The principles of the construction of the structure and the content selection for the section “Electrodynamics” are specified in order to demonstrate its methodological concepts in the physics textbooks for the profession-oriented level. These are the following: a) system nature and generalization, that is developing the electrodynamics content taking into account the basic physical principles and theories as well as generalization and systematization at the higher level; b) the integrity of the fundamental, substantive, methodological, philosophical knowledge that lies in the structured content, application of general principles, theories, ideas for the partial analysis of issues, development of the scientific style of thinking; c) common didactic principles of teaching that includes scientific nature, empirical linksto the theoretical knowledge, clarity, availability, etc.; d) “training as an educational model of science”, that is the possibility of designing a learning process in correspondence with the development of science as well as that methods of cognition, which are decisive in science, reflect the historical context of the study of that or another phenomenon, a methodology of its study; allow a learning process to “deploy” cognitive activities, involve a pupils in a quasi-research. The importance of the representation of the methodological issues in a textbook on physics for the profession-oriented level is predetermined by the fact that a wide range of requirements are set for a modern graduate of a physical (physical and mathematical)profile. The main of them are the following: mastering a system of physical knowledge, concepts and terminology as well as the methodology of this science, understanding the scientific facts; the formation of a scientific outlook and style of thinking, understanding the physical world outlook, the representation of the role of physical knowledge in human life and social development, introduction to the history of physics development; formation of the key and core to competences at the profession-oriented level, with the prospect of developing a future professional activity.