An Examination of the Interdisciplinary Connections Between Physics and Mathematics According to Secondary Education Physics Curriculum: The Case of Turkey

Introduction

The amount of life skills preschool children employ is awe-inspiring. Children learn quickly to meet their natural needs or satisfy their curiosity during this period. For instance, a child building a sandcastle may not be able to answer questions about the ratio of water and sand to be used, what angle the castle walls should be constructed, and how much water pressure the castle walls will be exposed to when they fill it with water. However, they have cognitive, sensory, and psychomotor learning while building the sandcastle (Johnston, 2005). When such learning is transferred to a school environment, the knowledge used in making the sandcastle becomes physical formulae, mathematical calculations, and chemical equations, independent of one another. Regarded as such, teaching concepts, principles, and theories under disciplines such as mathematics, physics, and geography independently of one another makes learning difficult. An interdisciplinary connection alleviates this problem for students to learn better. For instance, it has been suggested that there should be a multidisciplinary connection between mathematics and physics because they are compatible. For example, it is argued that physics and mathematics should adopt an interdisciplinary connection because these two courses are compatible. However, it is also underlined that this theoretical compatibility has not been reflected in either curriculum in a balanced manner (Park et al., 2021). Incorporating real-life problems into the teaching process is said to be the way to prevent this problem (Johnston et al., 2020). In this respect, it is argued that to support the natural process of learning, learning at school should be interdisciplinary; to provide students with a better learning experience, especially the multidisciplinary connection in science should be presented via a learning environment that exceeds the boundaries of the subject (Broggy et al., 2017). For instance, in many north American universities, graduate programs are offered in “science and mathematics education” not as separate entities but together (Park et al., 2021). STEM is a teaching method that integrates content and skills related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In this respect, STEM in teaching science is a way of supporting students in developing 21^st-century skills, which they need to sustain a quality life in the complex modern world (Johnson et al., 2020). In this integration in which engineering is a context, the aim is for students to make sense of real-life events using technology and various models, visuals, and symbols, using mathematical and scientific concepts (Martin-Paez & Aguilera, 2019). As such, to ensure STEM integration in a teaching program, first, there is a need for a structure onto which various teaching strategies could be incorporated, different combinations of disciplines comprising STEM could be included, and one field could be emphasized more than the other (National Academy of Sciences, 2014). In other words, the relationship between mathematics and physics, two of the significant disciplines of STEM, should be reflected in schools via curricula. This integration should be examined in the literature (Bahar et al., 2018). Positive sciences are a fundamental branch of science that aims to understand science's nature. To understand the nature of science through positive sciences, students should have a good grasp of mathematical forms and representations (Osborne, 2014). Moreover, the support of specific skills within mathematics such as data analysis and interpretation, probable and statistical thinking, and the use of mathematical tools provided for science should not be disregarded. In addition, it should be kept in mind that mathematical knowledge is essential in ensuring calculative thinking, the symbolic representation of variables and relations, and the prediction of conclusions. In this respect, mathematics is not only a tool for data analysis for science but also a way of thinking and reasoning (Wong, 2018).