New Perspectives in Science Education

A physics teacher may know the subject, select an appropriate teaching method and use modern digital tools. But does this ensure a coherent lesson? The question arises from a study involving 71 physics teachers in the Republic of Moldova. Their self-assessments reveal a stronger association between pedagogical and technological competences than between content and technological competences. This finding draws attention to a practical question: how are these three components connected when a physics lesson is designed?

We address this question through the alignment of scientific content, teaching methods and instructional tools. The starting point is the physical phenomenon itself, particularly the aspects that students cannot observe directly or find difficult to explain. The teacher's decisions follow a sequence: identify the conceptual difficulty, select the learning activity and choose the tool that makes the relevant physical relationship accessible.

We operationalise this sequence through three checks: content–method, method–tool and tool–content. Each check addresses a different question. Does the activity help students understand the intended concept? Does the selected tool support the cognitive action required by the activity? Does the tool reveal, measure or represent the relevant physical quantity?

We apply this approach to lesson plans covering different topics in school physics, selected to reflect a range of conceptual difficulties and instructional activities. For each topic, we examine how the choice of teaching methods and tools relates to the physical concepts being studied. The analysis considers different types of instructional misalignment and uses the three checks to identify where the connections between content, methods and tools become unclear or incomplete. Particular attention is given to the roles of real experiments, simulations and digital measurement tools, depending on what students need to observe, measure or explain.

The resulting framework makes instructional alignment examinable at the level of individual teaching decisions. It offers a concrete procedure for analysing physics lesson plans and for discussing their improvement in teacher education.