Kinematics students’ conceptual understanding in mathematical and visual representations: Is it different?

Abstract

The most basic representation that can describe a motion is visual (motion diagram) and a mathematical representation can be built based on it. Students are often inconsistent in using concepts when faced with questions that are presented with different representations. This study aims to see the differences in students’ conceptual understanding of the kinematics topic when they are faced with problems in visual and mathematical representations. This research is quantitative comparative research. The research was conducted on first-year students consisting of 93 Physics Education and 87 Physics undergraduate students. In this study, we used two instruments in a multiple-choice question format, consisting of 5 questions in verbal representation and 7 questions in mathematical representation. We tested the hypothesis using a paired-sample t-test. The results showed that students' conceptual understanding in verbal format was better than in mathematical format. Based on the results of the paired-sample t test, it was obtained t = -6.305 and sig (2- tailed) = 0.000. This shows that the differences in students' abilities in solving problems in the two representation formats are significantly different. The results of this study provide a contribution related to students' ability to solve problems that still depend on the representation of the problem.