Pre-service physics teachers’ understanding level about the “electric field in the RC circuit”

Abstract

The first condition of teaching a concept scientifically is to be understood this concept exactly by the individuals. In this sense, the understanding level of pre-service physics teachers who are the educators of tomorrow becomes an important issue. In this study, we investigated the understanding level of the pre-service physics teachers about the electric field in RC circuit during the charging and discharging of the capacitor additionally, after the capacitor is charged. The data was collected via qualitative research methods by using semi-structured interview protocol with 22 pre-service physics teachers. Content analysis method was used in data analysis and then the understanding level of the participants was determined. According to the results, nine pre-service physics teachers’ understanding level was determined as “Sound Understanding” whereas eight participants were in “Partial Understanding with Specific Alternative Conception” level. The understanding level of a participant was “No Understanding”, because of the irrelevant or unclear responses to the questions and four participants were determined to have some alternative conceptions. As a result; all the participants who could answer the questions, stated that an electric field occurs on the capacitor until it was charged. The participants have some alternative conceptions, especially about the electric field that occurred in the capacitor and in the resistor.

Keywords: Alternative conceptions, electric field, RC circuit, pre-service physics teachers, understanding level.