THE FORMATION OF SHADOWS: THE CASE OF THE POSITION OF A LIGHT SOURCE IN RELEVANCE TO THE SHADOW

The study of pupils’ representations of physics concepts and phenomena constitutes a central part of Science Education research, as they play a decisive role in teaching. In the study presented here, we investigate 212 fifth grade pupils’ mental representations of the formation of shadows, before they were taught about it in school. The empirical data was gathered through an interview using four tasks which involved the evaluation of hypothetical situations. The research data included representations that cause difficulty in the comprehension of the position of a light source in relevance to the shadow