Abstract
Learning physics helps students develop the ability to quantitatively express relationships between quantities that transfers to other contexts.
Highlights
Reading and interpreting information from graphs is an important skill in science and mathematics, and in everyday life, because information in newspapers, on the Internet and TV is often conveyed through graphs
In this study we identified similar incorrect strategies as in our previous study [11]: reading off initial and/or a final y coordinate value from the graph, reading off both coordinate values and its multiplication, reasoning based on graph appearance, use of inappropriate physics formula and reasoning based on the graph as an actual picture of the motion
The results of this study confirm our previous findings on student understanding of graph slope and area under a graph and bring some new insight into differences between graph experts and nonexperts
Summary
Reading and interpreting information from graphs is an important skill in science and mathematics, and in everyday life, because information in newspapers, on the Internet and TV is often conveyed through graphs. McDermott et al reported five dominant student difficulties in connecting graphs to physical concepts: discriminating between the slope and height of a graph, interpreting changes in height and changes in slope, relating one type of graph to another, matching narrative information with relevant features of a graph, and interpreting the area under a graph [1]. They have found the following student difficulties in connecting graphs to the real world: difficulty representing continuous motion by a continuous line, separating the shape of a graph from the path of the motion, representing negative velocity on a v vs t graph, representing constant acceleration on an a vs t graph, and distinguishing among different types of motion graphs.
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