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Multiple external representations (MERs) are useful for teaching complex content in science education. An open question is whether there is an especially effective way to sequence MERs. On the one hand, the so‐called concreteness fading approach suggests starting instruction with more concrete representations and proceeding stepwise to more idealized representations. The effectiveness of this fading approach is, however, supported mainly by studies in mathematics education, while the results in physics are equivocal. On the other hand, presenting different representations simultaneously may support linking, that is, the comparison and contrast of representations, which may benefit learning. In an experimental classroom study (N = 187), we compared concreteness fading and simultaneous presentation of MERs for learning a challenging physics content in high school, namely, Faraday's law. We found no significant differences between conditions in posttest performance, and an equivalence test with bounds d = −0.5 to 0.5 showed that both approaches performed equally. The results align with previous findings questioning the superiority of concreteness fading over other ways of sequencing MERs. Therefore, facilitating students' understanding of a complex physics content may involve more than determining the optimal order of presenting MERs. We discuss limitations of the present study and implications for future research and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research indicates that students' interest in science decreases during their school years. To counteract this, a quasi-experimental instructional intervention was designed in which we addressed students' leisure interests to foster their (situational) interest in physics. Students in the intervention group got the opportunity to choose topics matching their leisure interests (e.g. sports, music) and were encouraged to reflect on and discuss the application of principles of semiconductor physics to those topics throughout the intervention with a duration over 11 lessons. The intervention group consisted of 60 students from German high-track schools; another 55 students comprised the control group. The results of a MANCOVA analysis indicate that the instructional intervention succeeded in triggering students' catch and hold component of situational interest during all four phases of the lesson series. Furthermore, behavioural disengagement developed more positively for students in the intervention group, while no significant effects were found for their behavioural engagement, their interest in physics-related activities in leisure or their general interest in physics classes in school. The results suggest that addressing students' leisure interests in physics classes can promote their situational interest and reduce their behavioural disengagement in physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physics educators today face two major challenges: supporting the acquisition of a solid base of conceptual knowledge and reducing the persisting gender gap. In the present quasi-experimental study, we investigated the potential of physics instruction that is enriched with evidence-based cognitively activating methods, such as inventing with contrasting cases or metacognitive questions, to overcome both of these challenges. Four physics teachers in charge of two parallel classes each applied our cognitively activating instruction in one of their classes (CogAct classes). The other classes received regular physics lessons (regular classes) on the same content. The sample consisted of 172 individuals from the advanced track of Swiss secondary school. Controlling for several individual student variables. CogAct classes (N = 87) outperformed regular classes (N = 85) in conceptual understanding at posttest (p < .01, β = 0.19, 95% Cl [0.07,0.32]) and three months later (p < .05, β = 0.13,95% Cl [0.00,0.26]). The CogAct classes' advantage in conceptual understanding was not at the expense of their quantitative problem-solving performance, which even exceeded the quantitative problem-solving performance of the regular classes at posttest (p < .05, β = 0.14, 95% Cl [0.00, 0.28]). In addition, female students with above-average intelligence (PR >75) particularly benefited from CogAct instruction, as indicated by descriptive statistics and the interaction between intelligence and condition in the group of the female students for posttest conceptual understanding (p < .05, β = 0.88, 95% Cl [0.06, 1.69]). We conclude that teachers can successfully be supported in implementing cognitively activating methods that improve their students' conceptual understanding and reduce the gender gap in physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]