Indian Journal of Science • Analysis

This work gathers the student’s perceptions about physics and their expectations from teachers and course instructors. This is particularly important considering the decline in popularity of physics among students. The study is an effort to explore why students think physics as a difficult subject and what can be done to make it more interesting and attractive to them. Students studying in undergraduate and postgraduate courses affiliated to Guru Nanak Dev University, Punjab, were asked to fill a related questionnaire. The results indicate that most of the students believe that physics is interesting, but they want some changes in the traditional content of their course curriculum. Students would prefer to study topics like astrophysics, geophysics, environmental physics and biophysics so that they can see more connection between their studies and everyday life. The use of demonstrations to scaffold the student’s understanding of the subject needs to be encouraged by the teachers. Without any doubt, the student controlled factors such as weak base, insufficient self-study, lack of interest, do influence their success in physics. The study has revealed some of the changes required in course curriculum and teaching methodology, which we as teachers should attempt to enhance student’s interest in physics