written by Sachiko Tosa

It is often the case that students who did not take a high school physics course have difficulties in understanding content in college introductory physics courses. This trend in the U.S was examined in Japan. In this study factors that have strong correlations with the level of HS physics were identified for Japanese students in a lecture-type introductory physics course for science education majors (N=22). We found that physics grades as well as FCI scores had a strong correlation with the level of high-school. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 4 students who did not take HS physics and were having serious problems in following the content of the course. Our analysis revealed their high need to be prompted as a common feature when they tried to explain the motion of an object on a slope. We argue that interactive teaching strategies would be an effective way to help such students.

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Last Modified December 27, 2015

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