Can Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity be Taught to Indonesian High School Students?

Abstract

The detections of gravitational waves, which culminated in the 2017 physics Noble Prize award have again confirmed the triumph of the theory of general relativity. This theory, together with quantum mechanics, forms the backbones of our modern understanding of the world and significantly contributes to modern technologies we are using today. Despite the importance of these theories, they are still rarely part of high school physics curricula worldwide, including the Indonesian physics curriculum, due to assumptions that these theories are too difficult for students to grasp. However, there has been a growing interest to bring these theories to younger students and general public and there is growing evidence that appropriate teaching can result in measurable learning. The purpose of this research was to explore the impact of activity-based learning using models and analogies on high school students’ conceptual understanding of general relativity related concepts. It was conducted in one class of 31 students who participated in a three-week period program. Testing of their conceptual understanding used identical pre/post-tests. The results indicated a strong and statistically significant improvement in students’ conceptual understanding with a large effect size. Interestingly, the results showed that the change in conceptual understanding to physics of girls was higher than boys.

Probing High School Students’ Understanding of Einstein’s Theory of Gravity Using Thought Experiments and Analogy

“…They have learnt this concept since they were in elementary schools. Some high school students even took this concept for granted and failed to recognize that the concept is only valid when the space is flat (Dua, Blair, Kaur, & Choudhary, 2020). However, in this research, students' pre-test responses revealed a surprising result.…”

“…While in the previous research students were directly told about what Einstein's gravity is and the use of models and analogies was to visualize the concepts (Dua, Blair, Kaur, & Choudhary, 2020;Kaur T., Blair, Moschilla, Stannard, & Zadnik, 2017;Pitts, Venville, Blair, & Zadnik, 2013), in this research, we encouraged students to perform TEs and use analogies to deduce Einstein's idea of gravity. In this case, we followed the similar path taken by Einstein himself when formulated his theory of gravity Thorne, 1994).…”

“…One of the most frequently used models to explain Einstein's theory of gravity is the elastic rubber sheet model or pillow model or sometimes called spacetime simulator model (Baldy, 2007;Dua, Blair, Kaur, & Choudhary, 2020;Kaur T., Blair, Moschilla, Stannard, & Zadnik, 2017). In this model, spacetime is mimicked by the elastic rubber sheet and to represent the idea of spacetime curvature, a massive object like a heavy tungsten ball is put on that elastic rubber sheet to make it curved.…”

Einsteinian gravitational concepts throughout secondary school

“…This study explores the impact of a oneoff intervention on students' understanding of Einsteinian gravitational concepts. Similar studies have been performed in Lebanon [14], Australia [15,16], Indonesia [17] and Italy [18,19]. Each of those works report that students have a better understanding of gravity from a GR stand point after being introduced to concepts such as curvature, time dilation and spacetime diagrams.…”

Aprendizaje Significativo Crítico Y La Enseñanza De La Relatividad General: Una Revisión Sistemática

“…Ya algunos autores han encontrado que la teoría de Einstein y la astronomía son contenidos que interesan y mejoran las actitudes de los estudiantes hacia la física (Boyle, 2019;Ferreira, Lessa, Da Silva, Paulucci, & Ferreiro, 2021;Kaur, Blair, Moschilla, Stannard, & Zadnik, 2017b;Pitts, Venville, Blair, & Zadnik, 2014). Si bien estos temas no se abordan en la mayoría de los currículos de secundaria en el mundo, por varios motivos, entre los que sobresalen su complejidad matemática o su lenguaje contraintuitivo (Dua, Blair, Kaur, & Choudhary, 2020), han surgido estudios en algunos países interesados en llevar estas ideas de Einstein a la educación básica y media. Así mismo, por motivo de las investigaciones modernas en torno a la RG, aparecen algunos proyectos de investigación que han aportado reflexiones importantes sobre la enseñanza y aprendizaje de la RG en estos niveles educativos; incluso, han realizado trabajos de investigación en conjunto (Choudhary et al, 2019).…”