General relativity in high school: a comparative analysis of the physics curriculum in Brazil, Colombia, Scotland and Norway

Abstract

In line with recent discoveries related to black holes and the detection of gravitational waves, researchers and educators have become interested in bringing content related to General Relativity (GR) to undergraduate and graduate courses and, although still timidly , into basic education. With interest limited to high school, this paper aims to analyze, from a comparative perspective, the Physics curriculum documents of two South American countries, Brazil and Colombia, and two European countries commonly ranked highly in educational rankings, Scotland and Norway, to evaluate the inclusion of GR at the basic education level. Qualitative documentary research of normative curriculum documents was carried out, highlighting the conceptual, epistemological, and pedagogical aspects described in each one of them. The results showed that there is a curricular proposal for teaching GR in Scotland and Norway, but without specifying what content to include or how to implement it at these levels. The Brazilian curriculum assumes the teaching of concepts associated with Astronomy without explicitly mentioning the approach of Einstein’s theory. As for Colombia, there is no structured provision for GR content in the Physics curriculum, which indicates a need for updates, necessarily accompanied by funding, infrastructure, and adequate teacher training to include Astronomy and GR concepts, and thus achieve greater contextualization in teaching and learning.

Keywords:
Basic Education; Comparative Studies; Curriculum; General Relativity; Physics Education