Physics students' perceptions on teacher pedagogies

Abstract

Student-centred methods, inquiry-based learning and holistic education are the notions which are dominating contemporary Education discussions. It is often claimed that these methods are superior to traditional methods and research also shows the many benefits of educating students through such methods (e.g Rocard et al., 2007; Ministry of Education and Employment, 2012). With such an emphasis being made on this issue, I decided to see if teachers are making the shift to these methods. Furthermore, I sought to determine what interests and motivates students in Physics lessons and what aids them in their Physics learning. For this purpose, approximately 500 questionnaires were distributed to boys and girls in State and Church schools. The study was carried out with Physics Form 4 students. It resulted that there is a limited use of student-centred approaches. Traditional methods were the ones mostly used for instruction; however, these are not the methods students want to be taught with. Visual and social activities were amongst the activities which students said increased their interest and motivation in Physics. Making the subject relevant and contextualising it resulted to be very important for students. The good news is that no type of method resulted to be completely uninteresting, demotivating and unhelpful; hence it is very important for teachers to know their students and their interests and adapt their lessons for them. Most importantly we as teachers must be versatile in order to be able to design different types of activities and infuse our lessons with a variety of activities rather than restrict ourselves to just one method.