A meaningful introduction to the light postulate for secondary education students

The idea of uniform light speed in relativity theory runs against everyday experience, and proves hard to comprehend for students, even after formal instruction. We propose an alternative teaching approach that builds on students’ pre-instructional ideas, rather than starting from a formal definition, which is the practice in most textbooks. In the approach students are made aware of the role reference frames play in their pre-instructional ideas, and they are invited to explore and evaluate those ideas. Preliminary results indicate that this is a fruitful approach to encourage students to reason along the lines of the light postulate