Il costrutto di modello come ostacolo epistemologico. Una riflessione sulla didattica della fisica alla luce della teoria della trasposizione didattica.

The construct of model as epistemological obstacle. A reflection on the teaching of physics in the light of the theory of didactic transposition. The central topic of this dissertation concerns the influence of naive theories on students’ formal learning of physics. The theme is worth of interest because, although investigated from researchers belonging to different fields since the early 1970s, the problems inherent in the relationship between intuitive and expert physics appear far from resolved: the meaningful learning of the discipline – as Ausubel defined it – is still a cognitive stumbling block to a great deal of students, worsened by the common belief in the “tabula rasa” mind held by most teachers. In the attempt to offer a contribution to the improvement of Physics education, this thesis provides a specific perspective on the matter at hand by analyzing it in the light of the constructs of “didactic transposition” and “epistemological obstacle”. Our working hypothesis – supported by an exploratory research (without statistical significance) involving students attending Physics laboratories belonging to the Degree Course in Primary Education Sciences (University of Urbino) – states that a few deeply rooted misconceptions in classical mechanics are linked to some epistemological issues about the relationship between science and experience. In particular, attention is drawn to the use of idealized models as conceptual tools to represent aspects of the world and to the epistemic practices involved in the activity of scientific modeling. The principal aim of this work is to construct a taxonomy that covers at least the most important epistemological obstacles connected to the process of both generating and evaluating scientific models, in order to foster awareness on issues that – despite their relevance for understanding the counterintuitive Newtonian paradigm – are, because of different reasons, undervalued by teachers.