Student ideas concerning radioactivity at the end of secondary school and their relation to textbooks and the media. A case study

Abstract

Via ad-hoc questionnaire, this article explores some ideas students have about radioactivity at the end of their compulsory education. Moreover, it revises material on radioactivity taken from a sample of textbooks at a 9th grade level, as well as analyzes how these topics were addressed by a sample of newspapers after the accident at nuclear power plant in Fukushima. Finally, it studies, how students’ ideas relate to those covered by textbooks and the newspapers.