Scientific epistemology in learning physics through practical work

Abstract

Experience in conducting physics practical work provides an opportunity for students to engage in hands-on science activities and enhance the understanding and mastery of physics. Practical work that based on inquiry approach would be essential in generating student constructive thinking and scientific epistemology. By improving scientific epistemology students would form scientific views as scientists. The aim of this paper is to determine the common activities that students engage during physic practical work which can describe cultural student's practice. An unstructured observation is conducted on a group of students in one science school for an hour 15 minutes. All students' activities are recorded in the field notes at every five minutes interval to understand how science students perform the experiment during their regular practical work. The observation is also recorded by audio and video record. The data is being interpreted using thematic analysis to find the themes that represent the science school practice. The result shows that students are less practicing inquiry during practical work. There are four themes that obtained to describe the common activities of students in the science school; teacher's guide, applying scientific skills, interaction and emotion response. A science activity that students usually carry out during practical work is applying scientific skills, which is the highest percentage of the themes. The findings suggested that the practical work based on inquiry should be applied consistently in science school for students to gain real experience on how scientists should act and think.