GENDER DIFFERENCES IN MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS’ LEVEL OF PHYSICAL CONCEPT UNDERSTANDING: INFLUENCING FACTORS AND ROLE MECHANISMS

A substantial amount of research indicates that male students significantly outperform female students in terms of their ability and motivation to learn the subject of physics. In order to investigate the mechanism of external evaluation and physics learning motivation on students’ conceptual understanding of physics, this paper selected a sample of 252 high school students and analyzes the formation mechanism of gender differences using a structural equation model. The model shows that physics identity can significantly and positively predict students’ physics conceptual understanding level, while learning interest and self-efficacy have no significant effect on it. External evaluation is an important reason for the significant difference in physics identity between male and female students. Female students perceive a lower degree of recognition from others, which disrupts the formation and development of their physical identity, thereby further affecting their performance in physics learning.