Problems of Education in the 21st Century

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Authors: Editorial Board

Cover page

212-214

Authors: Mónica Baptista

Maria is a 17 year old 9th grade student with low academic success. Her school history is marked by several stories of failure in Physics and Chemistry. Yet, the 9th grade of Maria was different; as she says, she managed to achieve “a great mark ". Therefore, what has taken Maria to find the Physics classes so good? The answer to this question leads us to another one, more complex, that can have various possible answers: After all, what is a good practice of science teaching? To answer this question requires, first of all, to think about what students are expected to learn and what competencies they should obtain in school to meet the challenges of today's society, in all its uncertainty and endless changes. Nowadays, it is widely acknowledged that to understand and act in an informed and reflected manner in such a society it is essential that students develop their critical thinking and creativity as well as problem solving, communication, digital, social, intercultural and linguistic skills.

235-251

Authors: Cheng Chieh Chang, Sari Muthia Silalahi

Research collected and reviewed a number of empirical studies in the field of educational research regarding the analysis of mathematics textbooks to provide summary and overview the information there in. The questions were identified via Google Scholar and collected from different data sources. A total of 44 papers published from 1953 to 2015 were selected based specific criteria, with 24 articles include in the SSCI database. Descriptive statistics were used to evaluate and interpret the results. A perspective on the learning analysis methods was used to collect studies and showed the mathematics textbooks analyzed were investigated under four themes: The analysis of standards, distributive property, language in mathematics, and others. School’s level which is investigated textbooks: Kindergarten, elementary, junior school, and senior school. Subjects covered in the mathematics textbooks included algebra and arithmetic, geometry, measurement, data analysis and probability, number and operations, among others. Research found the most frequently discussed in perspective on learning was the analysis of the standards and the distributive property (15 studies), the most common subject was number and operations (16 studies), and the highest number in school’s level was elementary school (18 studies). Nevertheless, fewer studies have been found to analyzing mathematics textbooks. Future research can pay attention for the relevant theoretical issues and collaborate studies in more perspective learning analysis.

263-269

Authors: Özgür Özcan

Special theory of relativity is one of the difficult subjects of physics to be understood by the students. The current research designed as a qualitative research aim to determine the pre-service physics teachers’ understanding level and the alternative conceptions about three core concepts of special theory of relativity, such as time dilatation, length contraction and reference frames. The data were collected through semi structured interviews and were analyzed by using content analysis. At the end of the analysis process the understanding level of the students was determined to be “complete understanding”, “incomplete understanding” and “misunderstanding”. In order to achieve this, the students’ conceptual frameworks based on the operational definitions made by the students were determined firstly. The findings obtained in this research indicate that high school teachers as well as university instructors should take special care with some points in the teaching of the subjects related with special theory of relativity. This research might be useful to other studies to be done in the future, especially for investigating the students’ mental models related to special theory of relativity.

288-314

Authors: Roni Tinell, Mervi A. Asikainen, Pekka E. Hirvonen

The aim of this research is to depict foreign entrant students’ preparedness for studies in an international Master’s degree programme of physics at a Finnish university in order to lay the ground for a research-based development of the study programme. Interviews were conducted with the academic staff involved in the programme to investigate their views on the international physics students as learners. Conceptual tests were deployed to assess international students’ conceptual understanding of the areas fundamental to acquiring a solid expertise in physics. To enrich the data, a survey was conducted to obtain information about students’ physics-related epistemological views. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used for the data analysis. The main results suggest that the entrant international students comprise a very heterogeneous group with regard to their preparedness for commencing physics studies. The staff were specifically concerned with the international students’ pre-knowledge of physics, a notion that is supported by the test results. Suggestions based on present findings are made for further development of international degree programmes such as the one considered in this article.