Students' difficulties in answering quantitative and qualitative questions in SEC Physics

Abstract

This dissertation aims to analyse the difficulties which secondary school students encounter when answering quantitative and qualitative questions in physics. It also seeks to understand whether students find more difficulty answering quantitative or qualitative questions, and whether there are gender and school differences in students' performance on these two types of questions. In order to fulfill these aims a question paper was designed containing three questions, each having one or more quantitative and qualitative sub-questions, related to the topic Forces and Motion. These questions were administered to 126 boys and 130 girls from Area Secondary schools, Junior Lyceums and non-state schools who had already covered these topics. It was found that there was no prevailing difficulty between quantitative and qualitative questions and the major difficulties which students find in answering both questions are related to a lack of knowledge and understanding. Girls outperformed boys on the majority of questions. There was no significant difference in the performance of students from Junior Lyceums and non-state schools, whereas the performance of students from Area Secondary schools was consistently low. Finally, several recommendations are put forward for teachers to help their students become more proficient in answering quantitative and qualitative questions in SEC physics.