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<span lang="EN-GB">This study investigated students’ attitudes towards physics in Nine Year Basic Education (9YBE) in Rwanda. Data were collected from 380 students from Kayonza and Gasabo Districts using a physics attitudes test. Findings illustrated that more than a quarter of participants felt that learning physics is boring. About 39% think that the subject of physics does not relate to the real-world experience. A significant number of participants had negative attitudes towards physics in terms of the effort required for learning. The findings also showed that the overall level for participants in physics problem-solving skills was low</span><span lang="EN-US">.</span><span lang="EN-GB"> The item-by-item analysis showed that the differences between responses of students from rural schools and their counterparts from urban schools in categories of problem-solving and physics concepts connections and understanding are statistically significant. It was found that many students in rural schools need to know more about the interpretation of a new equation to be able to apply it to a new physics problem.</span>

Physics subject continues to be considered as difficult and unattractive by students. This leads to the development of negative attitudes towards the subject. Electricity and magnetism as one of the most important areas in physics is particularly considered as difficult due to their abstract nature. Different studies on students’ conceptual understanding of electricity and magnetism have been conducted and several instructional strategies for a conceptual change in this subject matter have been provided. However, there are still some persisting misconceptions even after being treated by those suggested instructional strategies. By using diagnostic tests and remedial approaches to sort out learning barriers, there is a possibility that students’ performance might improve, which would likely lead to disappearing these learning barriers and retaining the appropriate concepts over time scales beyond the assessment schedule of individual classes. Therefore, after reporting on the impact of students’ preconceptions on learning, this review paper also highlights some existing studies on students’ misconceptions in electricity and magnetism. The paper also updates physics educators and researchers on some conceptual tests and assessments used to test students’ misconceptions in electricity and magnetism and some suggested strategies for remedying those misconceptions. Some educational implications and practical recommendations for effective teaching and learning in electricity and magnetism are also outlined.

Considering the appropriate coordinate transformation and charge separation effect, the reductive perturbation method is used to derive a mKdV equation for a multi-component magnetized plasma having two Maxwellian electron distributions and two warm adiabatic ion distributions. The double layer solution of the mKdV equation is discussed in detail. It is found that the width of the double layer increases as we increase the obliqueness 6, where 6 is the angle between wave vector and magnetic field, while the effect of obliqueness on the amplitude of the double layer is negligible. The effect of finite ion temperature is to increase (decrease) the amplitude of compressive (rarefactive) double layer and decrease (increase) its width. The effect of the concentration of second ion impurity, concentration and the temperature ratios of two electron species on the amplitude and width of the double layer is also studied.