The Conceptual Learning of Physics in Slovenian Secondary Schools

In the last decade, educational researchers have been intensively searching for new, innovative teaching approaches. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has a great didactic potential and project COLOS (Conceptual Learning of Science) encourages the use of ICT in the contemporary educational process. In this paper we present the conceptual learning of Physics. With experimental research we investigated the effectiveness of such learning in Slovenian secondary school. Two groups of third-year students who were enrolled in an introductory Physics course participated in the study. In the experimental group students were taught through the conceptual learning and in the control group a traditional expository instruction was used. We examined the knowledge of students after carrying out lessons specifically on the topic of Electricity. Five thinking processes were assessed - Knowledge (Recall), Analysis, Comparison, Inference and Evaluation. We found that the conceptual learning was more effective than the traditional instruction.