Validated conceptual multiple-choice surveys administered before and after instruction in relevant concepts can be useful tools to gauge the effectiveness of curricula and pedagogical strategies. Here we discuss the use of four different validated surveys to investigate student understanding: The Energy and Momentum Conceptual Survey (EMCS), the…

This paper seeks to evaluate learning based on the competency approach, taking a didactic experience to evaluate a possible improvement in the ability to solve problems and for autonomous learning in general. For the didactic development, the theme "gases" was taken, which is generally enunciated: Corpuscular kinetic theory of matter;…

The first law of thermodynamics involves several types of energies and many studies have shown that students lack awareness of them. They have difficulties in applying the law to different thermodynamic processes. These observations were confirmed in our pilot studies, carried out with students from undergraduate colleges across the whole of…

In this study, we investigated students' understanding of concepts related to the microscopic model of gas. We thoroughly reviewed the relevant literature and conducted think alouds with students by asking them to answer open-ended questions about the kinetic molecular theory of gases. Thereafter, we transformed the open-ended questions into…

This study describes a research focused on grammar school students' misconceptions in the context of common, everyday thermal phenomena. Almost 500 Czech grammar school students from 24 classes were asked to fill in the reduced version of the Thermal Concept Evaluation in order to measure the asset of traditional instruction in eliminating…

The present study was carried out with 46 teacher candidates taking the course of "Thermodynamics" in the Department of Physics Teaching. The purpose of the study was to determine the difficulties that teacher candidates experienced in explaining the heat, work and internal energy relationships in the processes of adiabatic compression…

Background: Misconceptions are major obstacles to learning physics, and the concepts of heat and temperature are some of the common misconceptions that are encountered in daily life. Therefore, it is important to develop valid and reliable tools to determine students' misconceptions about basic thermodynamics concepts. Three-tier tests are…

As has been shown by previous research, students may possess various misconceptions in the area of thermal physics. In order to help them overcome misconceptions observed prior to instruction, we implemented a one-hour lecture-based intervention in their introductory thermal physics course. The intervention was held after the conventional lectures…

Interviews were conducted with grade 10 students (n=34) who had received 4 years of physics instruction. Interview's focus was to understand students' responses from their point of view. The results of the study confirm and deepen findings from other studies concerning students' severe difficulties in learning the energy concept, the particle…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of cognitive conflict based physics instruction over traditionally designed physics instruction on preservice primary school teachers at grade 2. The subjects were 82 (27 boys, 55 girls) second grade pre-service teachers in two classes. One of the classes (42 students) was randomly…

Introduction: This study sought to answer three questions: 1) Would the level of domain knowledge significantly affect the user's search behaviour? 2) Would the level of domain knowledge significantly affect search effectiveness, and 3) What would be the relationship between search behaviour and search effectiveness? Method: Participants were…