Speaker
Description
Spreading interest in physics among high-school students is crucial for course and career choices. When investigating interest in science, previous studies focused on four aspects: interesting contents (e.g. mechanics), contexts (e.g. biological), tasks (e.g. conduct an experiment), and learning environments (e.g. Science Centre).
Overall, researchers agree that when trying to arouse interest, context matters the most. However, it is not clear yet how the familiarity of a context affects the arousal and development of interest. Furthermore, previous studies did not include modern physics contents such as particle physics.
In the framework of a PhD project at CERN, a new study will examine which contents and contexts arouse interest in physics among high-school students. Different interest types will be identified while considering clustering variables beyond gender.
This contribution provides an overview of the current state of research.
