Abstract
Recent papers document that student problem-solving competence varies (often strongly) with representational format, and that there are significant differences between the effects that traditional and reform-based instructional environments have on these competences [Kohl and Finkelstein, Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 1, 010104 (2005); Kohl and Finkelstein, Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 2, 010102 (2006)]. These studies focused on large-lecture introductory physics courses, and included aggregate data on student performance on quizzes and homeworks. In this paper, we complement previous papers with finer-grained in-depth problem-solving interviews. In 16 interviews of students drawn from these classes, we investigate in more detail how and when student problem-solving performance varies with problem representation (verbal, mathematical, graphical, or pictorial). We find that student strategy often varies with representation, and that in this environment students who show more strategy variation tend to perform more poorly. We also verify that student performance depends sensitively on the particular combination of representation, topic, and student prior knowledge. Finally, we confirm that students have generally robust opinions of their representational skills, and that these opinions correlate poorly with their actual performances.
Highlights
Student representational and metarepresentational skills have been the subject of a number of studies in physics education researchPER
In two previous works,[13,14] we presented the results of a three-semester study investigating student representational and metarepresentational skills in large-lecture introductory algebra-based physics courses
To what extent does student performance on physics problems depend on the representational format of the problem? We found several instances where student performance was significantly different on problems that were essentially isomorphic, but posed in different representations
Summary
Student representational and metarepresentational skills have been the subject of a number of studies in physics education researchPER. By “representational skills” we refer to students’ ability to appropriately interpret and apply various representations of physics concepts and problems. These different representations can include verbal, mathematical, graphical, and pictorial formats, though these categories are by no means comprehensive or orthogonal. Much work has been done in PER on student representational skills. A few papers have broadened the study of representations to include metarepresentational skills.[9,10,11,12] Roughly, these studies ask what students know about representations, and how that knowledge might affect student performance
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