Physics Teaching Program

The National Professional Master’s degree in Physics Teaching (MNPEF) is a graduate program offered nationwide aimed at primary and secondary school teachers focused on the teaching content in Physics. It is an initiative of the Brazilian Society of Physics (SBF, in the Portuguese acronym) with the purpose of coordinating the knowledge of various Higher Education Institutions (IES, in the Portuguese acronym) from all over the country.

The goal is to qualify a very large number of primary and secondary school teachers at a master level, regarding the teaching content in Physics and current teaching techniques for classroom use, such as strategies that use electronic media resources, technological and/or computational resources for motivation, information, experimentation and demonstration of different physical phenomena.

This program intends to be of national and universal scope and to reach out to all the country, whether in capitals or far from major urban centers. There is a clear need for cooperation among qualified individuals from different IES. To this end, the program will be held in Regional Centers, hosted by some IES, where advisory of dissertations will be carried out and the curriculum will be taught. It is clear that the effort required for this master's degree demands the participation and/or cooperation of existing centers where Professional Master's degrees in Physics Teaching already take place.

This National Professional Master’s degree in Physics Teaching is classified by CAPES in the following area of knowledge: Astronomy/ Physics. 

Lines of Research

The lines of research and development of this master’s program (MNPEF-SBF) are organized in order to classify dissertations and teaching materials produced by students as a requirement for obtaining a master's degree. We have initially identified four relevant strands: 

1.     Physics at Primary School

Area of concentration: Physics in Basic Education. Development of products and approaches aimed at Physics teaching content suitable for Secondary School students, related to other subjects of the school curriculum.

2.      Physics at Secondary School

Area of concentration: Physics in Basic Education. Updating the Physics curriculum for Secondary School to include results and theories of Contemporary Physics aiming at a proper understanding of the changes that these results have caused and will bring about in citizens' lives.

3.      Learning/Teaching Processes and Information and Communication Technologies in Physics Teaching

Area of concentration: Physics teacher training at Master's level. Development of teaching and learning products and processes using information and communication technologies such as computer applications, tablet media, computer modeling and platform simulations, automatic data acquisition, mobile and social networks.

4.      Physics and Society

Area of concentration: Development of teaching and learning products and processes that highlight the various relationships between physics, culture and society, including both artistic and cultural production focused on physics teaching content as well as the development of Physics as a more inclusive space.