From a museum demonstration to problem solving: promoting the construction ofconcepts

Abstract

Physics is perceived by many students to be a difficult subject, and misconceptions about itare quite common not only among school students but also among undergraduates andpre-service postgraduate science teachers. In teaching the topic of gas pressure to primarystudent teachers studying in the Bachelor of Education programme at my institute, Iadopted a constructivist approach to guide students to resolve a problem task that wasadapted from an ‘egg-in-the-bottle’ demonstration. The students were highly motivated toaccomplish the task, and there was evidence that they were constructing or reconstructingconcepts about gas pressure and applying these concepts to solve the problem, althoughmisconceptions still abounded. It is recommended that this type of approach beutilized by secondary school physics teachers to engage students in constructingconcepts and to elicit and clarify their misconceptions about other physics topics.