ABSTRACT
When I began teaching more than a decade ago, I had just completed a masters degree in physics, but I did not have any background in educational psychology or methodology. Pondering how I should approach the teaching of science, it occurred to me that I wanted my students to learn in a setting like the one in which I had experienced the excitement of scientific discovery, and I recalled my days in graduate school: I remembered those long days and nights when I sat over my results, eagerly trying to understand the meaning of all those graphs and charts; I remembered the long discussions I had with my peers who worked on similar problems for their theses to come to understand our own and each other’s work; I remembered the discussions with post-doctoral students and professors through whose critical questioning I came to reflect on my own understanding; and I remembered those weekly seminars where we (professors, post-doctoral, doctoral and masters students) critically examined, in turn, each of the research projects in the department of atomic physics. I was determined to create classroom environments in which my students could experience all the excitement of real science and the excitement of finding out for themselves, and with others, in a setting that nurtured abilities and where science was conducted authentically. Since then, I have taught all my courses in laboratory, nonlecture settings that emphasize science as a process of meaning-making, and knowledge as individual and negotiated construction.
