The Future of Education

In an increasingly technologically demanding world, knowledge and skills within natural sciences, technology and engineering are crucial for development of competitiveness of individuals and societies. Thus, recent decades many countries are emphasizing and planning to introduce the STEM fields in education systems as early as possible, including basic concepts of modern physics. By learning basic concepts of modern physics (quantum physics, special relativity, elementary particle physics, etc.) youths acquire knowledge and skills relevant to solve complex problems, understanding data and information, which makes them competent for validating evidence for responsible decision-making. Basic concepts of special theory of relativity can be extremely interesting for youth and thus, for research in physics education. Philosophically, concepts in special relativity are very demanding, while the mathematical formalism is simple enough to introduce them in secondary high school. Research-based assessment resources at the PhysPort portal are very useful tools in physics education research of misconception (physport.org/assessments/). Here, we report difficulties in understanding the basic special relativity concepts in high school, which are less analysed comparing to concepts in classical mechanics. By using selected and adapted tasks on basic concepts in special relativity, which are developed by J.S. Aslanides and C.M. Savage in 2013, we have analysed linear correlations between misconception of basic special relativity concepts.

Keywords: linear correlations, special relativity concepts, misconception.