The influence of high school physics teachers' beliefs about physics and physics education on alternative conceptions in electromagnetism: a Lesotho study

[摘要] This study was designed to investigate beliefs of Physics Teachers, in Lesotho,about Physics and Physics teaching and their awareness of students' alternativeconceptions.The study used three questionnaires as its research tools. The first questionnaireinvestigated beliefs of teachers about Physics concepts, particularlyelectromagnetism, and the teaching of those concepts. An 'index of agreement'was calculated to determine the tendency of responses. The second queatlonnalreinvestigated teachers' awareness of students' alternative conceptions, while thethird investigated Students' alternative conceptlons. Teachers' predictions arecompared with the students' answers.The study shows some teachers having beliefs which can be grouped into twocategories, namely constructlvlsts and empiricists. There is however no clearseparation between the two categories. The study also shows that some teachersare not aware of students' alternative conceptlons, while some teachers had thesame alternative conceptions as students,

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand