The disappearance of light - explanations given by the primary school pupils

Abstract

In the years 2004-2006 the National Centre of Professional Development in Education (Finland) and the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Tampere, Finland carried out together nine in-service courses under the title “Teaching physics and chemistry at grades 5 and 6”. As a home assignment between three contact periods, I asked teachers to collect authentic material on their pupils’ science thinking with the help of some carefully planned inquiry tasks. In the article, I present some examples of the most typical responses which primary school pupils gave to the question: “When the lights are turned off in a room on a dark winter night, the darkness will take over the room in the twinkling of an eye. Where do the rays of light which last left the lamp disappear?”. The explanations were categorised under six metaphors describing the different ways of understanding the disappearance of light.