Examining the Effects of High School Physics Classes Designed to Foster Conceptual Change and Investigating the Moderating Role of Self-Efficacy

Abstract

Many high school students tend to disengage from studying physics due to its difficulty. We attribute this disengagement to “misconceptions” and propose an instructional design aimed at fostering students' conceptual change. We examined the effectiveness of this design, which incorporates conflicts between correct physical conceptions and misconceptions, connections with surrounding conceptions, and a review of the surrounding conceptions. Analyses revealed that students' understanding of physics concepts and self-efficacy increased after the intervention. Furthermore, we observed moderating effects based on students' self-efficacy levels before the intervention; specifically, students with low self-efficacy showed greater improvement through the intervention compared to those with high self-efficacy.