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Misconceptions, knowledge, and attitudes of secondary school students towards the phenomenon of radioactivity

Since its serendipitous discovery in 1896 by Henry Becquerel, radioactivity has called the attention of both the scientific community and the broad audience due to its intriguing nature, its multiple applications and its controversial uses. For this reason, the teaching of the phenomenon is considered a key ingredient in the path towards developing critical-thinking skills in many secondary science education curricula. Despite being one of the basic concepts in general physics courses, the scientific teaching literature of the last 40 years reports a great deal of misconceptions and conceptual errors related to radioactivity that seemingly appear regardless of the context. This study explores, for the first time, the knowledge status on the topic on a sample of N=191 secondary school students and Y=29 Physics-and-Chemistry trainee teachers in the Spanish region of Valencia. To this aim, a revised version of a diagnostic tool developed by Martins \cite{Mar92} has been employed. In general, the results reveal an evolution from a widespread dissenting notion on the phenomenon, which is staunchly related to danger, hazard and destruction in the lowest educational levels, towards a more rational, relative and multidimensional perspective in the highest ones. Furthermore, the great overlap of the ideas, emotions and attitudes of the inquired individuals with the main misconceptions and conceptual mistakes reported in the literature for different educational contexts unveils the urgent need to develop new teaching strategies leading to a meaningful learning of the associated nuclear science concepts.