A Qualitative Study On High School Students’ Conceptual Understandings Of Electricity And Magnetism

The present study is designed to explore a group of high school students’ perceptions of fundamental principles of electricity and magnetism. Primarily, this research is guided by the following research questions: (1) what are the common conceptual knowledge do high school students possess about electric current and magnetism? And (2) what are the possible difficulties or misconceptions and possible solutions students have in the concepts? To summarize, we sought to investigate high school students’ conceptual and cognitive understandings of electricity and magnetism at a local public school in the state of Ohio in the United States. The findings revealed that most of the students could retain only inadequate amount of the topics studied in elementary physics courses and for that reasons remedies are suggested to enhance their knowledge such as including problem-based learning (PBL) strategies in the curriculum studies.