Students' common conceptions on magnetostatics: The case of Olongapo City National High School fourth year students

• Main Author: Uson, Marlon A.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2005
• Subjects: Magnetostatics—Study and teaching (Secondary)—Philippines—Olongapo City; Science and Mathematics Education
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/6796
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study was conducted to find out students’ understanding of magnetostatic phenomena, and to collect alternative conceptions of students and categorizing them. A 15-item open ended questionnaire with items mostly adapted from the study of Guisasola, Zubimendi and Almudi (2004) was devised, validated, and utilized as the instrument. Moreover, face-to-face interviews were done with randomly selected students to verify and provide in-depth analysis on the consistency of the responses. Seventy-five students, 25 from each of the three curricula (ESEP, SPA and BEC) implemented at Olongapo City National High School were utilized as sample for this study. The result shows that alternative conceptions on magnetostatic phenomena are prevalent among OCNHS students. The low scores for all the respondents show that the concept of magnetism is poorly understood by the students and most of them have alternative models to explain magnetostatic phenomena. The students’ alternative conceptions were grouped into four categories of descriptions namely: (1) Inherent Nature of Matter, (2) Ingenuous Realistic, (3) Electrical, and (4) Confusion among Vectors. Answers in which the students identified the source of magnetic field and justified the equivalence of spirals of current and magnets were considered correct and grouped under the “Amperian” category.