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This article articulates the unsatisfactory conditions for doing practical work in science subjects in secondary schools. It explores how teachers teach science without having the necessary equipment to do such work. I shall attempt to show that practical work has many benefits to the teaching and learning of science and every learner should be afforded an opportunity to do it. Often teachers try to explain a practical experiments theoretically to learners. This is done in the hopes that learners will understand the science concepts, even though the teacher and the learners have to "imagine" as if science concepts were reality. My argument is that, during the examination period, all learners are assessed on the same level irrespective of whether the practical activity was done on not. Many learners do practical work for the first time at tertiary level, without having had the proper training and background for doing practical work. Consequently, the results in Physical Science continue to be below par, as evidenced in the Grade 12 results. This study is a reflection on the experiences of teachers and that of the author at 30 schools in the rural areas of South Africa.

This phenomenographic case study attempted to determine the alternative and misconceptions of learners in selected concepts in Physics. The research adds another dimension to understanding alternative conception in kinematics by qualitatively determining how learners describe/define a distance of 0m, a displacement of 0m, a speed of 0m/s, a velocity of 0m/s as well as an acceleration of 0m/ss. Data were gathered by means of a free response test. Senior high school grade 12 learners were purposefully selected to complete the test. Data were analyzed by qualitatively interrogating the descriptions and related graphs and pictures to look for the ways in which learners described these concepts. The research revealed that some learners were not able to comprehend the meaning of a displacement of 0m, thus they experienced challenges in the understanding of the concepts such as a speed of 0m/s, a velocity 0m/s and an acceleration 0m/ss. The data seems to suggest that learners fail to formalise and contextualise “0” as a concept in kinematics. Key words: alternative and misconceptions, contextualising “0” concept, kinematics concepts, phenomenographic study.

The quality and standard of South African examination questions for the grade 12 examination have become an important issue for the South African education system. So far, the focus of empirical research has been on factors that lead to poor performance in the Physical sciences as well as the alignment of the grade 12 Physical Sciences examination with the core curriculum in South Africa. On the contrary, this research paper focuses on a different aspect: the weaknesses and the strengths of the Physics examination questions. It addresses the question of how the Physics examination questions cover higher and lower order level questions in the Bloom’s revised taxonomy. To answer this question, the Physics examination questions of the year 2014 and 2015 were analysed using Bloom’s revised taxonomy of learning objectives. The examination questions were codified and the frequencies and percentages of occurrence of different learning objectives were calculated. The results show that third level cognitive skills were more prevalent than other ones. Furthermore, examiners asked questions that require application and few questions requiring the recall of knowledge. Keywords: physics examination, revised Bloom’s taxonomy, quality of education.

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