Teaching physics: Students’ attitudes towards different learning activities

Abstract

The decline in the popularity of physics over the period of secondary schooling and its consequent low uptake at A‐level and beyond continues to cause concern on educational and economic grounds. The aim of this study is to explore whether physics might be made more attractive to students by employing an extended range of classroom and laboratory activities to teach it. Specifically, the study scores the popularity of a range of activities, students’ perceptions about how often these activities are used to teach physics, and whether students consider them educationally useful. Students appear to think in terms of written activities, passive activities, social activities and constructive activities. Written activities are relatively unpopular and seen as educationally less effective, but students perceived them as used frequently. Social activities such as group work are more popular. The most popular activities are constructive activities, such as doing experiments; these are seen as educationally useful, but are perceived as being used less often than other activities. While there are legitimate limitations on the types of activities that can be used, these findings add to our appreciation of which teaching activities students like and value.