As part of their third-year general chemistry program, students at the University of the Côte d'Azur are taught the basics of radioactivity. The view that third-year university students have of the periodic Table of the Elements is often reduced because it ignores the vast majority of isotopes. As part of this program, a practicum devoted to the…

Background: Many researchers have investigated student reasoning in Newtonian mechanics. In 1979 Viennot revealed that most students associate the concept of force with the velocity or acceleration of a motion. Forty years later, student understandings remain a major challenge for teachers. The implications of this challenge are still unclear,…

During the early decades of the 18th century, Newtonian physics was still new. Much effort was expended in testing its validity. One arena in which evidence could be found was the shape of Earth. Was it perfectly spherical? On the observational side there were two hints. In 1671 Jean Richer had measured the rate of ticking of a pendulum clock near…

History of education reveals that the perimeter of a school subject as well as the manner of teaching it may vary according to the time period, the country, its political situation and its economic needs. Furthermore, if it clearly depends on the level of the learners and on the school itself, sometimes the teacher's preoccupations can adapt it.…

Understanding and constructing domain-specific external representations, such as kinematic diagrams, is an important goal of engineering education. International standards (ISO 3952-1) prescribe their format in terms of graphical elements in black and white and two dimensions. However, during training, the canonical format is often modified under…

The experiment that we present in this paper explores the teaching of Galilean motion principles observed in different reference frames, in an astronomical context. All grade 10 students in a French high school (the lycée Condorcet, Val de Marne) participated in two successive teaching-learning sessions, designed within the theoretical framework…

This study examined how high school students' attitudes toward advanced physics were predicted by their sense of school belonging, and how gender moderated this relationship. The Trends in International Math and Science (TIMSS) 2015 Advanced data, consisting of responses from 12th grade students enrolled in advanced physics courses among nine…

This study examined outcomes for AP® Calculus and AP Physics students on the 2015 Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) relative to other participating countries and other advanced math and science students in the United States. Compared to other countries in the study, AP Calculus BC and AP Physics C: EM students outperformed all…