Ninth grade students' mental representations of the refraction of light: didactic implications

Abstract

The study of students' mental representations of physics concepts and phenomena constitutes a central part of physics education research, as they play a decisive role in teaching. In the study presented here, we investigate 213 ninth grade students' mental representations of the phenomenon of refraction, after they were taught about it in school. The empirical data was gathered through an interview using 3 tasks which involved the evaluation of hypothetical situations. The research data included mental representations that cause difficulty in the comprehension of refraction.