Abstract
A bimodal distribution of student preuniversity standardized physics test performance can be attributed to different educational experiences of students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
Highlights
The present study is concerned with aspects of preuniversity science education in India, which marks a watershed in the country’s education system
The bimodality in physics tests corresponds to two different educational experiences, one in which the school ties up with privately run coaching centers and the other which has no such arrangement
It broadens the cross cultural perspective provided by Bao et al whose study revealed that learning of content knowledge does not have an impact on the scientific reasoning ability of the students in the U.S and China [1,2]
Summary
The present study is concerned with aspects of preuniversity (grades 11 and 12) science education in India, which marks a watershed in the country’s education system. A large scale survey reveals that the performance of the Indian preuniversity students in internationally standardized physics tests is intermediate to the American and the Chinese but reveals a disturbing bimodality. The bimodality in physics tests corresponds to two different educational experiences, one in which the school ties up with privately run coaching centers (which we term as the integrated mode) and the other (nonintegrated mode) which has no such arrangement.
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