Assessing the effectiveness of constructivist teaching approaches in physics education: insights from free fall motion topics

Nor Adilah Zailani

Abstract

Physics subjects encompass all aspects of nature on both the macroscopic and submicroscopic levels. It was reported that upper secondary school students in Malaysia have difficulties in some topics in Physics which lead to poor performance of students and a lack of interest in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics subjects. This research assessed the level of students' knowledge of Free Fall Motion, explored the difficulties faced by the students with Free Fall Motion’s topics, measured the effectiveness of the constructivist teaching approach for students in learning Free Fall Motion, and collecting students' perception towards the constructivist teaching approach. This study used a pretest-posttest research design. The population was upper secondary school students from public secondary schools in Malaysia and 30 students were selected as a research sample in this study Using descriptive analysis and paired sample t-tests, it was revealed that majority of students preferred constructivist teaching approach in learning this topic as significant difference in effectiveness of two constructivist coping techniques, visual learning and contextual learning were observed while, assisting students in managing difficulties in learning Free Fall Motion. In conclusion, the constructivist teaching approach improved student`s understanding of the Free Fall Motion concept, however, because of different perspectives and having to adapt to various methods of learning, not all of the students were interested in applying it in their classroom. Keywords: Constructivist Teaching, Learning Physics Subjects, Upper Secondary School Students

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