University students’ explanations for electric current in transitory situations

Abstract

This study deals with analysing students’ causal reasoning when tackling electric current in transitory situations in introductory physics courses. We emphasise the types of reasoning students use in explanations at macroscopic and microscopic levels, as this knowledge is helpful for designing and implementing novel teaching approaches, which help articulate macroscopic and microscopic levels of description. Two open-ended questions were used to analyse students’ reasoning, with emphasis on explanations. As seen in the obtained results, an important percentage of students are not able to correctly interpret phenomena in simple transitory current states. Their explanations can be categorised into two general categories. The first one is based on relational causal reasoning and the second one is a form of reasoning that excludes current flow in transitory state processes. We look at several aspects that have barely been mentioned in previous research at university level related to the topic of transitory current in circuits, such as possible difficulties with complex reasoning and the type of reasoning students use when they establish macro-micro relationships.