PROSPECTIVE PHYSICS TEACHERS’ MENTAL MODELS ABOUT SHADOW
Abstract
Students’ mistaken views about explaining the behavior of light due to shadow events based on the ray model are often emphasized by many studies in the related literature. There are also some studies showing that even students at university level have similar misconceptions including the prospective physics teachers. Considering these, we firstly find out the mental models of 20 prospective physics teachers regarding the ray model of light by using 4 openended questions. Afterwards, the prospective physics teachers were given experimental work sheets using the ray model of the light during a 3 week period followed by the same open-ended questions as post test. The worksheets were examined to observe some changes in mental models of prospective physics teachers. The results show that students’ mental models about shadow are mainly depend on the shape of the mask (or object) rather than the direction of the light. Besides, at the end of the instruction the students still had some wrong mental models they had before the instruction.
Keywords
Prospective physics teachers, mental models, ray model, shadow
References
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