Using Physical and Virtual Manipulatives to Improve Primary School Students’ Understanding of Concepts of Electric Circuits

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of experimenting with physical manipulatives (PM), virtual manipulatives (VM), and a blended combination of PM and VM on primary school students’ understanding of concepts in the domain of electric circuits and whether any possible differences relate to the processes that students engage in during PM or VM experimentation. A pre-post comparison study design was used for the purposes of this study that involved 55 participants assigned to three conditions. The first condition consisted of 18 students that used PM, the second condition consisted of 18 students that used VM, and the third condition consisted of 19 students that used the blended combination of PM and VM. For blending VM and PM the Olympiou and Zacharia (Sci Educ 96(1):21–47, 2012) framework was used. This framework takes into consideration the PM and VM affordances and specifically targets the content of each lab experiment separately. All conditions used the same inquiry-oriented curriculum materials and procedures. A conceptual test was administered to assess students’ understanding before and after teaching. Process-related data were derived from video data. Results revealed that the use of the blended combinations enhanced students’ conceptual understanding in the domain of electric circuits more than the use of PM or VM alone. Differences in the effect emerged because only the blended combination was carrying both of PM’s and VM’s advantageous affordances.