In the past ten years, engineering classrooms have seen an exponential growth in the use of technology, more than during any other previous decade. Unprecedented advancements, such as the advent of innovative gadgets and fundamental instructional alterations in engineering classrooms, have introduced changes in both teaching and learning. Student…

This article summarises the practical requirements for new science A-levels in biology, chemistry and physics for first teaching from September 2015. It discusses the background to how the new approach was reached and how OCR has seen this taking shape in our assessment models. The opportunities presented by this new approach to practical…

The role of analogies as tools for teaching difficult science concepts has been widely discussed in science education. The application of analogies in the context of sustainable education involves richer potential. The purposeful use of appropriate analogies can facilitate analogical thinking and transfer skills, as well as develop abilities which…

Physics literacy plays a crucial part in global technological development as several aspects of science and technology apply concepts and principles of physics in their operations. However, the acquisition of scientific literacy in physics in our society today is not encouraging enough to the desirable standard. Therefore, this study focuses on…

Broad instructional methods like "interactive engagement" have been shown to be effective, but such general characterization provides little guidance on the details of how to structure instructional materials. In this study, we seek instructional specificity by comparing two ways of using an analogy to learn a target physical principle:…

This article proposes a methodology that could assist teachers in understanding their students' primary needs or interests to decide on the kind of examples or contexts to be used in the classroom. The methodology was tested on 100 volunteers from university (N = 50) and high school (N = 50) in Ankara, Turkey. The participants were asked to write…

Physics applets are well known appealing resources to teach and learn physics, and a large number of them are available on the Internet. Nevertheless, not all of them are of the same quality, because such applets do not fit every specific teaching/learning purpose. The start question was which features should have a physics applet in order that it…

The aim of the present study is to investigate the process of constructing a Multimedia Assisted Vocabulary Learning (MAVL) instrument at a university in Rwanda in 2009. The instrument is used in a one-computer classroom where students were taught in a foreign language and had little access to books. It consists of video clips featuring images,…

In the May 2014 issue of "The Physics Teacher (TPT)," we reported that 39% of high school seniors in the 2013 class took at least one high school physics course prior to graduation. (See "TPT" 52 n5, 276-277.) This month we take a closer look at participation in high school physics by racial/ethnic group. As we see below, Asian…

The study is a comparative analysis of physics candidates' scores in West African and National Examinations Councils. It also investigates influence of gender. Results of 480 candidates were randomly selected form three randomly selected Senior Science Colleges using the WASSCE and NECOSSCE computer printout sent to the schools, transformed using…

This article addresses the issue of gender imbalance in Finnish universities in the domain of physics as a historical and dialectical phenomenon. Drawing from the Gramscian notion of hegemony and the activity-theoretical notion of contradiction, this paper analyses gendered hegemonic and contradictory forces steering physicists' careers. This…

The Current study investigated the effect of the 5E learning cycle in which the simulations were integrated on pre-service science teachers' achievement in photoelectric subject. Four sophomore level classes with their 140 students participated in the research and a quasi-experimental design was used. The classes were randomly assigned into one of…

In physics education, equations are commonly seen as calculation tools to solve problems or as concise descriptions of experimental regularities. In physical science, however, equations often play a much more important role associated with the formulation of theories to provide explanations for physical phenomena. In order to overcome this…

The impact of Physics laboratory on students was carried out among senior secondary school students offering Physics in Ethiope West Local Government Area of Delta State using descriptive survey. Five public schools were random-even samplying technique was adopted for precision. Fifty questionnaires were distributed to students in each school,…

The main purposes of this study were to identify Taiwanese university students' physics learning profiles in terms of their critical conceptions of learning physics and to compare their physics learning self-efficacy with the different learning profiles. A total of 250 Taiwanese undergraduates who were majoring in physics participated in this…