The decline in students' interest in science and technology is a major concern in the western world. One approach to reversing this decline is to introduce modern physics concepts much earlier in the school curriculum. We have used the context of the recent discoveries of gravitational waves to test benefits of one-day interventions, in which students are introduced to the ongoing nature of scientific discovery, as well as the fundamental concepts of quantum physics and gravitation, which underpin these discoveries. Our innovative approach combines role-playing, model demonstrations, single photon interference and gravitational wave detection, plus simple experiments designed to emphasize the quantum interpretation of interference. We compare understanding and attitudes through pre and post testing on four age groups (school years 7, 8, 9 and 10), and compare results with those of longer interventions with Year 9. Results indicate that neither prior knowledge nor age are significant factors in student understanding of the core concepts of Einsteinian physics. However we find that the short interventions are insufficient to enable students to comprehend more derived concepts.

Einsteinian physics represents a distinct paradigm shift compared to Newtonian physics. There is worldwide interest in introducing Einsteinian physics concepts early in school curriculum and trials have demonstrated that this is feasible. However introducing Einsteinian concepts from an early age requires more than suitable curriculum and teaching resources -it also requires teacher training and public support. This paper describes a pilot study used in an attempt to gauge public and teacher support. This entailed giving teachers, who included the entire staff of a primary school, and self-selected family groups an in-depth understanding of proposed curriculum content through public outreach and professional development workshops. We assessed their attitudes through questionnaires. Comments and opinions from the public were also collected from online resources. Results show overwhelming support from both teachers and the public. We assessed attitudes of children as well as adults and obtained opinions regarding the appropriate age at which to begin to introduce Einsteinian concepts.

There is growing interest in the introduction of Einsteinian concepts of space, time, light and gravity across the entire school curriculum. We have developed an educational programme named 'Einstein-First', which focuses on teaching Einsteinian concepts by using simple models and analogies. To test the effectiveness of these models and analogies in terms of student attitudes to physics and ability to understand the concepts, various short and long interventions were conducted. These interventions were run with Years 6 to 10 academically talented and average IQ students. In all cases, we observe significant levels of conceptual understanding and improvement in student attitudes, although the magnitude of the improvement depends on age group and programme duration. This paper reports an unexpected outcome in regard to gender effects. We have compared male and female outcomes. In most cases, independent of age group, academic stream and culture (including one intervention in Indonesia), we find that female students enter our programmes with substantially lower attitude scores than males, while upon the completion of the programme, their attitudes are comparable to the boys. This provides a compelling case for widespread implementation of Einsteinian conceptual learning across the school curriculum. We discuss possible reasons for this effect.

No abstract