Abstract
<p style="text-align: justify;">We investigate students’ misconceptions in electrostatics, direct current (DC) and magnetism which are important in electricity and magnetism. We developed and administered a multiple-choice questionnaire test to reveal students’ misconceptions related to charged bodies, lightning, electric fields, electric potential, forces, DC resistive electric circuits and magnets. This test aimed at obtaining quantitative information about misconceptions and was administered to 380 senior two students from Nine Year Basic Education (9YBE) Schools. The selected students have some experience with the new Rwandan secondary physics Competence Based Curriculum (CBC) that is currently under implementation. We find that senior two students have several common misconceptions related to these concepts. The data indicate that although students have some backgrounds on the subject matter, they still seem to believe that if the two charges are separated by a distance, a large-charged object exerts a greater force of attraction or repulsion on the small one. Considerable number of participated students held the misconception of considering current consumption in the resistor/bulb or the electrical devices in the circuits. They also believed that the battery was a continuous current source. The findings also revealed that students held a misconception that a bar magnet when broken into pieces, it is demagnetized. Moreover, a considerable number of participants hold the misconception that all metals are attracted by a magnet. Our study also revealed some of the statistically significant differences in terms of either gender or location of schools for some items.</p>
Highlights
In Rwanda, at lower secondary school education, physics is among core subjects from S1 to S3
We investigate students’ misconceptions in electrostatics, direct current (DC) and magnetism which are important in electricity and magnetism
Based on our analysis of data from 380 physics students, we found that several students have misconceptions of basic concepts of electricity and magnetism
Summary
In Rwanda, at lower secondary school education, physics is among core subjects from S1 to S3. The students’ low conceptual understanding of physics concepts was reported among reasons leading to the problem of low performance of secondary school physics students. Literature highlighted that students’ performance in physics is largely affected by their initial knowledge that may include some misconceptions (Halloun & Hestenes, 1985; Hermita et al, 2017; Mbonyiryivuze et al, 2019; Uwizeyimana et al, 2018). Research has revealed that the students’ initial common senses beliefs or preconceptions is the major determinant of what students learn in the course and largely affect performance in physics (Halloun & Hestenes, 1985; Li & Singh, 2017; Uwizeyimana et al, 2018). Several researches on students’ conceptual understanding and their misconceptions have become a central issue in physics due to their effect on students’ learning and performance from the past four decades
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