Representations Based Physics Instruction to Enhance Students' Problem Solving

Abstract

Physicists use multiple representations such as sketches, motion diagrams, force diagrams, graphs, and mathematical equations to represent concepts. This study probed the effect of utilizing multiple representations while learning physics and solving physics problem. The samples of this study are the first year of senior high school (in 2013) in Pontianak district-West Kalimantan. Qualitative and quantitative research methods were applied to identify students’ representation, to analyze students’ score and to acquire the effect of multiple representations after students learning the concept. The result shows that students who employed more than one representation such as motion diagram, force diagram while solving the problem got higher score than students did not. This indicates that multiple representations can be effective to enhance students’ understanding of physics concept as well as problem solving skills.