Experimental virtual activities and integral learning in physics teacher formation

Abstract

Physics teacher training must consider the impacts of the fourth digital revolution and other sociocultural demands of the current context to raise the quality of teachers' professional performance. The main objective of this paper is to demonstrate the transformations made in the didactic conception of virtual experimental activities and their impact on the comprehensive learning of future Physics teachers. The teaching physics experiment constitutes one of the central axes in the direction of the Physics teaching-learning process and an area of special interest in research and didactic innovation in experimental sciences. The need to update experimental activities, their structuring, and didactic sequences in virtual learning environments is imperative in contemporary conditions, given the increase in distance education and the limitations of real-world resources in the Physics laboratory. This study employed quantitative and interpretive research methods, emphasizing correlational analysis with the deployment of theoretical, empirical, and statistical methods, and the design of a pre-experiment. A sample of 34 students training as Physics teachers for general secondary education was selected. The main results obtained reflect a notable increase in the levels of cognitive, procedural-strategic and axiological learning of future teachers with virtual experimental activities, which impacts the effectiveness of their professional pedagogical performance.