STRESSING THE COHERENCE OF PHYSICS: STUDENT JOURNALISTS’ AND SCIENCE MEDIATORS’ REACTIONS

With this investigation, we sought to assess the extent to which future journalists and science mediators are able to take a positive attitude towards stressing the coherence of physical theories in their chosen profession. To this end, we also examined a second question: how members of this same population react to an exercise designed to stress the value of coherence in physics, as a possible source of intellectual satisfaction. We sought to document the possible impact of the obstacles we had anticipated, and to characterize the students' progression in relation to the goals just described. Our investigation was based on 14 interviews with third-year university students who hoped to become journalists or science mediators. We focused our interaction with them on a specific example in physics, concerning a problematic hypothesis widely used in explaining how a hot air balloon operates. We provided elucidation in the course of each student's intellectual progression during the interview. Finally, we report their value judgements – impressively positive – concerning the two questions outlined above. The results suggest that, despite their low level of specialization in physics, such students can develop, at least in the very particular circumstances described, a critical and positive attitude towards searching for and stressing coherence in physics. They also support the idea that, were a concern for coherence to be taken as a desirable component of a training programme, corresponding teaching-learning sequences should be prepared, designed and evaluated in great detail, to ensure optimum adaptation to each individual's progression.