How can the topic of electricity be taught in a way that engages Year 10 girls with GCSE Physics?

Thesis

The aim of this action research project is to develop and teach a series of electricity lessons, using tasks which engage Year 10 GCSE physics students in a highly academic girls’ school.

It builds on the work carried out in Part 2, where focus groups were carried out across four year groups to ascertain student perceptions of physics. Electricity was a topic perceived as particularly disengaging. The post-16 uptake of physics in my school is aligned with the national trend; the number of students choosing to study physics is significantly lower than the number choosing to take biology and chemistry. This study argues that increasing student engagement with electricity may be valuable to increasing the uptake of physics post-16.

This study begins with a literature review to set out what is meant by engagement, outlining the problems with the current research in the area and highlighting ways in which engagement can be increased. The use of modelling to increase engagement is thoroughly examined.

A survey of 144 Year 10 students was carried out to elicit students' views of engaging electricity teaching. Seven electricity intervention lessons were taught and their success was evaluated using Grounded theory to systematically analyse audio recordings from a Year 10 focus group of four students. Following the focus group, the intervention lessons were adapted to develop an electricity revision lesson for Year 11 students. The success of this lesson was similarly evaluated using a focus group followed by Grounded theory analysis.

The main findings of this study suggest that girls' engagement can be increased by ensuring that tasks are designed to include elements of synthesis of prior physics knowledge or opportunities for collaboration with peers. Girls were not engaged when tasks were perceived to have no relevance to their everyday experiences. Due to the level of abstraction inherent in much of the topic, it was found that the personal relevance of each task could not always be explicit.

Authors: Telford, J

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-wvnq668g4
• Type of award: MSc
• Level of award: Masters
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Keywords: Science; MLT2017; MLT
• Subjects: Education