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Research on students' thinking about the particulate nature of matter has shown that students find it difficult to connect the macroscopic with the sub microscopic world. Although they have heard about atoms, students stay within a continuous model of matter or attribute macroscopic properties to particles. The research presented focuses on the arguments students make when they have to explain experiments on a sub microscopic level. The question is if experiments convince students of the applicability of the particulate nature of matter. Therefore, the researchers conducted twenty interviews according to the method of probing acceptance with students from lower and upper-secondary school. Every interview featured one of five experiments, commonly used in teaching. The goal was to see if the experiments helped students to successfully apply the particulate model of matter. Students' answers were coded using qualitative content analysis. The results of this research show, that explaining experiments on a sub microscopic level proves a great challenge for students. None of the five experiments seems to be a good starting point when engaging students with the particulate nature of matter for the first time. Therefore, further research should focus on other ways of introducing this difficult topic to students.

Demonstration interviews with 27 high school students (18-19 years old) were conducted in Zagreb, Croatia, using several standard experiments on interference and diffraction of light. Students were asked for their predictions, observations, and explanations of the experiments. In this process, many student difficulties were identified, both regarding their understanding of interference and diffraction of light, but also regarding their skills of systematic observation and description of experimental patterns. The observed difficulties were analyzed in the resource-based model, suggesting the activation of some p prims, as well as other cognitive resources in the process of students' attempts to predict, describe, and explain the interference and diffraction patterns.

Newtonian mechanics is still among the most difficult topics in the physics' syllabus taught at school. For example, even after completing traditional instruction, students still think that a force is necessary to maintain motion. Therefore, a revised method of instruction is needed that meets students' learning needs. The aim of the project presented in this article was to develop and evaluate novel teaching units for the introduction to Newtonian mechanics. Rather than changing methodology, the content area itself was restructured innovatively with careful consideration of the most common preconceptions. Based on diSessa's notion of conceptual change as the reorganisation of these only loosely connected preconceptions, so-called p-prims (diSessa, 1993, 2008), the strategy pursued was aimed at triggering the activation of appropriate p-prims while avoiding the activation of inappropriate p-prims. For example, to lower the activation priority of the above mentioned notion, a consistent introduction to mechanics via two-dimensional dynamics was chosen. In the first year of the corresponding study, 10 participating teachers taught their 7th-grade classes in the traditional one-dimensional way. In the following year, the same teachers taught (other) 7th-grade classes using the revised twodimensional way. Students' knowledge of mechanics, self-concept and interest in physics were assessed. This quasiexperimental field study showed a significant improvement in students' conceptual understanding. Thus the findings of this project suggest that altering the content structure of a particular topic might be an important parameter to improving learning outcomes.

Our study investigates whether confidence correlates with consistency in reasoning, specifically about radioactive decay. In prior work, we developed and tested a survey designed to measure consistency of student reasoning about radioactive decay by comparing responses to three prompts that are isomorphic, meaning that, despite having different surface features, they can all be answered appropriately with the understanding that radioactive decay occurs at random. In this paper, we compare (i) student patterns on these isomorphic prompts with (ii) confidence ratings that students provided together with their responses. Our research question is "to what extent does student confidence correlate with consistency in reasoning about radioactive decay?" We have found that there is no significant correlation, suggesting that more confident students are not more likely to be consistent. One reason why this finding is relevant is that the misconceptions model attributes consistency to student ideas (as opposed to the pieces model, which describes student ideas as potentially being context dependent). Our findings suggest that it is premature to describe a student idea as a misconception, even if the student is confident in that idea.

A new diagnostic instrument, the Conceptual Survey on Wave Optics (CSWO), was developed and validated on 224 high school students (aged 18-19 years) in Croatia. The process of test construction, which included the testing of 61 items on the total of 712 students is presented. The final version of the test consists of 26 multiple-choice items which cover basic conceptual aspects of interference, diffraction, and polarization of light at the high school level. The construction of the test and the evaluation of its functioning and validity were conducted using the Rasch model. The test construct was based on the increasing levels of cognitive complexity in accordance with the Webb's depth of knowledge model. The theoretical construct was empirically confirmed, and it suggests that the explanations of wave optics phenomena and their application to real-life situations are the most difficult aspects of high school students' understanding of wave optics. The results of the Rasch analysis suggest that the CSWO is a reliable diagnostic instrument suitable for administration as a post-test to high school students after instruction on wave optics and possibly also for university level students in some introductory physics courses.

This paper describes the second in a series of studies exploring the acceptance of the subatomic structure of matter by 12-year-olds. The studies focus on a novel learning unit introducing an atomic model from electrons down to quarks, which is aimed to be used at an early stage in the physics curriculum. Three features are fundamental to the unit's design: conveying the central role of models in physics, focusing on linguistic accuracy, and the use of novel typographic illustrations. An initial study saw the iterative redesign and retesting of the unit through 20 one-on-one interviews with grade-6 students. Findings indicated broad acceptance of most of the unit's key ideas, hinting that the unit's final version is plausible for 12-year-olds. Subsequently, the research was focused on the perspective of teachers to gain insight into their evaluation of the unit's adequacy and didactic feasibility. Therefore, the current follow-up study was designed to introduce the proposed unit to grade-6 students. This time, instead of education researchers, 13 teachers conducted a set of 17 one-on-one interviews. The teachers had been introduced to the learning unit and the research method during a professional development programme. Our analysis showed that the unit's key ideas were broadly accepted by all the students, who adequately used them for problem-solving during the one-on-one interviews. Overall, the documented results validate our findings from the initial study and indicate that the learning unit is adequate and well-suited for a broad evaluation in the classroom.

This article reports the development of a two-tier simple electric circuits test (2T-SEC Test). Simple electric circuits are introduced to students early in their school years and are an important part of the physics curriculum all the way to the university level. However, many students do not develop an adequate conceptual understanding of simple electric circuits and especially of electrical voltage. For this reason, six physics education research groups from Germany and Austria started a large study to evaluate and improve middle-school students' conceptual understanding of simple electric circuits. As a first step, we developed the test instrument presented in this article. First, nine semistructured interviews were conducted with middle-school students in Austria. The interviews were transcribed, analyzed and (common) student difficulties with simple electric circuits were identified. Second, based on the results from the interviews and previous research on this topic, an instrument consisting of 25 two-tier multiple-choice items was developed and administered to N = 1568 middle-school students in Austria and Germany. Third, the data were evaluated using Rasch analysis. The item reliability of the test was 0.99, while the person reliability of paired scoring was 0.62 and the reliability of separate scoring was 0.75. The average difficulties of the main concepts regarding simple electric circuits (open and closed circuits, electric current, resistance, series and parallel circuits, and electrical voltage) were calculated and compared. The analysis suggests that the concept of voltage is most difficult for students while distinguishing between open and closed circuits is the easiest.

Polarization of light is one of the topics in the Croatian high school physics curriculum. It is taught in the final year of high school education. Twenty-seven Croatian high-school students (aged 18-19 years) were interviewed after regular instruction about their understanding of polarization of light and the model of light itself. This paper reports on the observed students' reasoning strategies and conceptual difficulties. Some of the reported difficulties correspond with previously identified difficulties, but some new difficulties were also found. Students often based their explanations on the remembered but misinterpreted common schematic representations of polarization. Explanations seemed to be created on the spot, suggesting the absence of prior models of polarization.

Conceptual Change is a widely accepted theoretical framework for science education. Setting up successful learning and teaching arrangements in this framework necessarily entails including students´ preconceptions into the construction of those arrangements. In order to provide a basis for such arrangements this study investigated and explored preconceptions about radiation in a qualitative case study with seven students (age 17-18). The use of grounded theory allowed the discovery of deep-rooted conceptions and the formulation of a theory to help learners understand the basic concepts of radiation more quickly and more reliably. The results revealed a new conception "the nature of radiation", which hampers students' understanding and interferes with their explanations of radiation. Additionally, analysis of the data revealed interesting conceptions concerning the danger of different types of radiation. These highly interesting findings about the nature of radiation will be embedded in a broader perspective and suggestions for learning and teaching about radiation will be given.

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Curriculum Development: Theory into Design.] Although curriculum design has a long tradition in physics education research (PER), it is often criticized for unclear or inconsistent methodologies. One reason is that the theory-into-practice aspect frequently remains blurred. Only a few curriculum projects have given insight into the rule-guided translation of learning theories into curricula and curriculum materials. This paper reports how design-based research (DBR) was used as a framework for systematic curriculum development during a six-year-long project on a middle school optics curriculum. One key feature of DBR is to deduce design principles from theoretical and empirical foundations, apply them in the creation of a curriculum, and refine them in response to data collected during successions of implementation. The design principles guide and structure the iterative cycles of design-intervention-redesign and make a systematic and nevertheless flexible design process transparent. We provide the level of detail needed to make clear how design principles were developed and applied in the creation of the optics curriculum. In addition, we use many examples to illustrate how and why the initial set of design principles was refined. We report the results of a large scale evaluation of the curriculum that shows its superiority to conventional instruction. Finally, we summarize the lessons learned during this project. This shall support other scholars in designing and implementing curricula.

This study introduces a teaching concept based on the Standard Model of particle physics. It comprises two consecutive chapters--elementary particles and fundamental interactions. The rationale of this concept is that the fundamental principles of particle physics can run as the golden thread through the whole physics curriculum. The design process was conducted from a constructivist perspective based on students' documented conceptions. Three pillars underpin the whole teaching concept: a permanent model character, linguistic accuracy, and innovative typographic illustrations. Using the framework of design-based research, microteaching sessions with 20 Grade-6 students were conducted to probe its acceptance. The study focusses on learning processes of 12-year-olds with respect to elementary particles. Our findings indicate broad acceptance of most key ideas, but also avoidance when considering the permanent model character of physics. The most promising outcomes of the study are pure typographic illustrations. Not only were these thoroughly accepted by all students, but they also seem to reduce known misconceptions. Overall, students' understanding of elementary particles improved fundamentally.

One basis of good teaching is to know about your students' preconceptions. Studies about typical ideas that students bring to the science classroom have been and continue to be a major field in science education research. This study aims to explore associations and ideas that students have regarding "radiation", a term widely used in various fields and necessary to understand fundamental ideas in science. In an explorative study, the perceptions of 50 high school students were examined using semi-structured interviews. The students were 14-16 years old and were chosen from 7 different high schools in an urban area in Austria. Following an interview guideline, students were asked about their general associations with the term "radiation" as well as about their general understanding of different types of radiation. A qualitative analysis of these interviews following the method of Flick (2009) revealed that the students' associations were, to a great extent, very different from the scientific use of the term. Several conceptions that could inhibit students' learning processes could be identified. Consequences for the teaching of the topic "radiation" in science lessons, which are based on these preconceptions, are presented in the conclusion.