The ‘state of art’ of the research on Magnetic field teaching: a review of physics education literature between 1995 and 2015.

Resumo

In this paper, we present a review of the Physics Education literature on the topic of Magnetic Field. We investigated eleven renowned national and international journals in the field over a period of twenty years, collecting papers that involve situations where magnetic field is present. Items collected were categorized within a qualitative literature perspective and three categories emerged naturally. It was noticed that students’ difficulties in understanding this concept is somewhat linked to their inability to visualize three-dimensional situations involving the magnetic field. The use of computer simulations was suggested as a possible means of addressing this. Despite criticism/ suggestions made by various authors regarding the use of Computer Simulations to teach this concept, there are few investigations theoretically and methodologically grounded on the educational applications of computer simulations to teach Magnetic field in the curricula of courses where this concept is deemed as important.