Introducing Student-Centered Approaches in University Physics Education: Perspectives on PO-PBL Learning, Interventions and Challenges

This PhD study presented what possibilities and challenges arise in university physics courses when a student-centred view of teaching inspired in a socio-cultural perspective of learning and in the Project Oriented Problem Based Learning (PO-PBL) model of Aalborg University was introduced and implemented in a curricular reform of the physics courses for medicine and biology students of Los Andes University (Bogota, Colombia). This research showed that such vision of teaching and learning allowed students to the involvement in the activities of this particular community – physicists –, generated spaces for the negotiation of meaning of the concepts, theories, ways of addressing problems and using their cultural tools and requires the teacher assuming a different role so that it is legitimate and enables taking advantage of the learning opportunities. In addition, the challenges in the process have two levels: the needs and challenges that appeared immediately when the proposal was implemented (physical space, time-distribution, etc); and almost structural challenges as the approach of disciplinary contents, the differences between research of the teaching of physics and physics alone. These last challenges orient new pathways for research.