ABSTRACT

Despite the contemporary emphasis on students’ practical work, lecture demonstrations with their unique power to stimulate students’ interest remain an inseparable part of physics education. At our faculty, performing physics demonstrations for upper secondary students (DEMOs) has a tradition lasting three decades. In our study, we sought to identify factors predetermining students’ positive acceptance of these demonstrations. With a research sample of almost 5000 students, we used the modified Intrinsic Motivation Inventory questionnaire to investigate their intrinsic motivation towards and perception of DEMOs. Subsequently, we examined this data against respondents’ gender, marks in physics, intention to study it at university, and declared attitudes towards physics as a school subject. We found out the acceptance of DEMOs is independent of gender and students’ interest in physics as a school subject. On the other hand, better marks in physics and stronger intention to study it were associated with a more positive assessment of the demonstrations. As the strongest predictors for positive acceptance of DEMOs, giftedness, and diligence in physics (as expressed by respondents themselves) were identified. Cluster analysis uncovered four groups of students, one of which especially seems to be interesting regarding the possibility of their future study of physics – it groups students who do not plan to study physics at this moment but achieve good results in it and have a relatively high intention to study some other STEM discipline. Because they showed a largely positive perception of DEMOs, we discuss the possibilities to use lecture demonstrations to stimulate their interest.

摘要

尽管当代强调学生的实际工作，但课堂演示以其独特的激发学生兴趣的力量仍然是物理教育不可分割的一部分。在我们的教职员工中，为高中生进行物理演示 (DEMO) 的传统已经持续了三年。在我们的研究中，我们试图确定预先决定学生积极接受这些示范的因素。我们通过近 5000 名学生的研究样本，使用修改后的内在动机量表调查他们对 DEMO 的内在动机和看法。随后，我们根据受访者的性别、物理成绩、大学学习意愿检查了这些数据，并宣布了对物理作为学校学科的态度。我们发现对 DEMO 的接受与性别和学生对物理作为学校科目的兴趣无关。另一方面，更好的物理成绩和更强的研究意愿与对演示的更积极评估有关。作为积极接受 DEMO 的最强预测因素，物理学中的天赋和勤奋（如受访者自己所表达的那样）被确定。聚类分析发现了四组学生，其中一组似乎特别有趣，关于他们未来学习物理的可能性——它把目前不打算学习物理但在物理上取得好成绩并且具有相对较高的学生分组。打算学习其他一些 STEM 学科。因为他们对 DEMO 表现出非常积极的看法，