مدى استيعاب وتطبيق المفاهيم الفيزيائية لدى معلمي العلوم في المرحلة الأساسية

This study investigated science teachers' comprehension and application of physics concepts given in the Basic Curriculum (grades 1-9). The effect of certain demographic factors on the achievement test, prepared by the researcher, was also studied. Those variables are .years of experience, qualification, sex, place of institution of qualification, grade level, place of work, and major specialization. The subjects of the study consisted of 92 teachers who are teaching science for the Primary Grades (23% of the target population) .The researcher developed an achievement test .A panel of experts validated the content of the test and approved it for the study .The reliability of the test was 0.87 calculated by Rulon formula . The test was administered in Fall 1994-1995. One way Analysis of Variance was used to test the seven hypotheses at (α = 0.05), followed by Scheffe's post-hoc test. There were significant differences between the mean scores of science teachers who had 13.Sc. and teachers with a community college diploma on the test. Also teachers who were teaching in cities' schools performed better than teachers in village schools . The best performance on the achievement test Was among teachers of physics followed by chemistry .biology ,general science and mathematics respectively. More results showed that teachers who had taught Secondary and Primary grades performed better than those who taught Primary grades only. There were no significant differences related to the rest of the variables in this study such as sex .years or experience ,and the country of graduation . We may conclude from this study that teachers who had graduated from Palestinians institutions had performed like their colleagues frOI11universities abroad. In the light of the above results.this study recommended that the policy makers at the Ministry of Education should make a comprehension review of all academic programs given for those pre-service teachers, in a way that allows more physics courses to be taught. In addition science training workshops and seminars in physics should be given for in-service teachers regularly to improve their teaching. New variables such as number of physics courses taken by the teachers, general knowledge and age should be investigated in future research.