The career-oriented experimental practical course is aimed at all students on the dual-subject Bachelor’s degree programme in Physics with a view to becoming a teacher, as well as students on the Master of Education programme specialising in Economics or Special Educational Needs. It lasts one semester and is offered both in the winter semester (two groups of 12 students each) and in the summer semester (one group of 12 students). The module is worth 8 KP and consists of a four-hour laboratory practical and a two-hour seminar. The practical takes place on Fridays, and the seminar on Monday mornings. Attendance at both sessions is compulsory.

In the practical session, we focus on three key areas:

• Firstly, students are given the opportunity to deepen and broaden the technical and experimental skills they acquired in the introductory physics practicals (phy211 and phy215 or phy212) in relation to school physics. To this end, on each laboratory day, a physics topic is examined experimentally in detail. Current topics include mechanics, optics, electricity, magnetism and thermodynamics. For students specialising in H or R, this in-depth study continues in the Experimental Practical Course for Mainstream, Secondary and Special Schools (phy213). In the seminar following each laboratory day, the topics are discussed from a didactic perspective and with a view to the professional context of school teaching.
• Secondly, this deepens the discussion regarding the didactic benefits of the experiment and its integration into lessons. Here, the experimental practical builds on previous modules such as ‘Learning and Teaching Physics’ (phy260) . By incorporating learners’ perspectives, the focus here is on the role of the experiment in the process of gaining knowledge. This is supported by digressions into the historical background of physics as an experimental science, for which the experimental practical course can draw on the collection of historical experimental replicas from the former research focus of the History of Physics working group.
• Finally, direct contact with school pupils is also a key focus of the course. To this end, a school class is invited to the practical course on at least one occasion, during which the students carry out experiments together with groups of pupils. This gives students the opportunity to gain first-hand experience, at an experimental station they have designed themselves, of how school pupils interact with physics experiments.

Experiences gained from the module are revisited in the subject-specific teaching modules of the Master’s phase (phy410 , and phy420/423/424) and, where applicable, in the Bachelor’s thesis.

Students usually work in pairs (although there may be exceptions for certain topics) and, as part of their assessment, produce a report for each laboratory session.

Sebastian Peters, Marko Mansholt, Michael Komorek