Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of students' prejudice on performance in practical work on pendulum motion. In this study, 142 subjects ranging from kindergartners up to undergraduate students responded to interviews, utilizing actual objects and employing the Prediction-Observation-Explanation Method. Subjects were first asked to predict how far the pendulum bob will swing. Then, doing the actual experiment, they observed the phenomenon. Finally they were asked to explain various matters concerning pendulum motion. The following results were obtained from the investigation: 1) With regard to practical work concerning pendulum motion, adding the pole to the setup was found effective in inducing falsification among the notion that the starting point is lower than the final point. (2) Subjects who had exposure to school science tend to congregate on providing specific and scientific types of responses in practical work, while those who had no exposure gave random responses. (3) The ability to extract a scientific conclusion from practical work depends on the subjects' prior scientific knowledge on the matter. In the final section of this paper, the implications of these results for science education are briefly discussed.
