Introducing ISLE with an Inspiration from the Mythbusters

Abstract: The purpose of this paper was to analyse how the ISLE method and the TV-show theMythbusters correspond to one another, to the Swedish upper secondary physics curriculum andPopper’s philosophy about research methods.The study aims to respond to the following research questions: 1. How do the structures of the Mythbusters and ISLE relate to one another? 2. What are the possibilities and potential benefits and drawbacks of implementingISLE with a Mythbusters approach in physics education? 3. To what extent do the Mythbusters and ISLE approaches present natural sciencepractices that are in line with Popper’s view of the nature of science? The paper shows that the structures of the Mythbusters and ISLE approaches to teaching andproblem solving relate via their focus upon scientific methods. Both give, to some degree, thepeople that interact with them confidence and tools to be able to analyse events they observe.The analysis found some isolated parts of correspondence between the Mythbusters andPopper’s view of nature and science. ISLE, however, is pervaded by Popper’s ideas of scientificmethods, where the main assumption is that you cannot prove anything, you may only try tofalsify it and thereby give the hypothesis a higher corroboration.Even though the creator of ISLE motivates the reasoning of choosing the falsification andcorroboration as main ingredients in a way that differs from Popper’s arguments, its essence ofthe concepts is still there.If an instructor were to include the Mythbusters, with for example using myths that the showtreated as an hypothesis, when implementing ISLE in a physics education course, the coursewould correspond quite well will Karl Popper’s idea of falsification and corroboration. It is alsogiven an implication that the students perform better when the TV-show is used as tool to learnabout scientific methods. The inclusion of Mythbusters as a resource for learning can serve as abridge between popular culture, everyday phenomena and school physics, which can potentiallyhave a positive impact on student motivation.