The mastery of physics' scientific terms in form 2 science subject: a preliminary study in initiatives to improve HOTS among students

Abstract

Higher order thinking skills (HOTS) is a skill that is very important in today's education. To generate HOTS among students, the understanding of a concept is very important. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the level of students' mastery in Form-2 Physics scientific terms, especially those which they understood less and to examine the extent, to which they could master them, besides providing recommendations for improvement in terms of appropriate teaching and learning approaches. A total of 305 students in three schools in Johor were selected randomly for the study to identify the level of Physics scientific terms mastery and the problematic scientific terms among them while a total of 54 students were selected by purposive sampling to examine the extent, to which, these students could master the scientific terms. The findings revealed that, the level of students' mastery in Physics scientific terms was in weak category and that, there were twelve of scientific terms found problematic among the students. The results of the study also indicated that, on average, students were able only to explain basic definitions of terms, but not their respective applications. In addition, it was found that, there was a term, namely, Atmospheric Pressure, which could potentially lead towards misconception among the students. Thus, this study was important to identify the problems related to the mastery of understanding scientific terms prior to the subsequent phase to provide suggestions for improvement in terms of appropriate learning approach to be proposed later.