Students’ contextualizing knowledge on the mirage incident, reflection and refraction: a case study

Abstract

Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine how high school students apply optical principles and relate them to contexts where reflection, refraction, and dispersion occur together. The study group consists of 60 students enrolled in a high school in the Western Black Sea Region. The data consists of progressive (multiple-choice and open-ended) questions that direct students to specific contexts in which they can explain optical principles. The questions aim to determine students’ contextual and contextualized knowledge. The analysis of the data was carried out by making classifications. The findings are that about half of the students correctly associate the events of ‘reflection’, ‘refraction’ and ‘mirage’ with the given contexts and about three quarters of them cannot define the relevant concepts in the context. According to the findings, it was concluded that the contextual knowledge of the students about the concepts given was partially, but their contextualized knowledge was not sufficient. It is recommended to associate the subjects including the concepts of reflection, refraction and mirage with daily events in order to make them concrete and fun for students in the teaching process, to use up-to-date topics that may attract students ‘attention, and to diversify and increase the contexts appropriate to students’ levels. In addition, it is recommended to make sense of the concept in context in addition to context-concept association in teaching processes.